Eclipse and Actionscript 3

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+1 Q:

Eclipse and Actionscript 3

Does anyone know of any good solutions (Eclipse plugins presumably) for using Eclipse to develop in ActionScript 3?

There are a number of solutions for developing with ActionScript 2, leveraging MTASC, Swfmill and other open source tools, but I'm specifically looking for AS3 support.

It's simple enough to use Eclipse as an editor, and a place from which to invoke Ant scripts to compile with the Adobe command line tools, but I'm looking for syntax colouring, autocompletion, refactoring, debugging - all the modern IDE luxuries.

Other tools I've used:

FlashDevelop: free and good, but Windows only and doesn't have refactoring. Nevertheless a nice piece of work.
IntelliJ Idea: very nice ActionScript 3 support, though not quite as slick as their Java support. Unfortunately AS3 is not supported in the free/community edition of Idea and I'm not ready to purchase the full version as yet.

+2 A:

Two good commercial options:

Adobe Flash Builder. Available as either standalone or Eclipse plugin (standalone is just Eclipse with the plugin already bundled). http://www.adobe.com/products/flashbuilder/
FDT. Eclipse plugin. I used to use the AS2 version but I've heard really good things about the AS3 support. http://www.fdt.powerflasher.com/

Sam 2010-04-28 02:27:27

FDT looks interesting - though to get any refactoring functionality you need the Enterprise version, and for that price I'd probably just go Intellij, which satisfies in all but price.

teapot7 2010-04-28 03:33:34

+2 A:

If you get Adobe Flash Builder, you can also purchase SourceMate as an addon to give more refactoring / other tools. But it's a lot cheaper than FDT.

davr 2010-04-28 22:27:21

Very nice - if I were using FlashBuilder I'd certainly augment it with SourceMate. As far as commercial solutions go I think I'm still happiest with IntelliJ though.

teapot7 2010-04-29 00:29:49

@teapot7: I wish someone would do a comparison between Flash Builder, FDT, and IntelliJ. I use FB, but am interested in if the others do anything majorly useful to me, but don't really want to invest the time to learn a whole new system just to find it wasn't worth it.

davr 2010-04-29 04:05:41

One thing I can say is that you can get different output from different IDEs working on the very same code. See the following link for something that didn't make me very happy:http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2331279/flash-movie-being-scaled-without-me-asking/2333340#2333340

teapot7 2010-04-30 00:44:27

+1 A:

I own Flex Builder and FDT. I use FDT Professional, I admit the original purchase price seemed steep, but if you're going to code AS3 for a living it will pay for itself in pretty short order.

With the most recent (3.5) version able to edit MXML with code hinting, there is little I miss it for. The major exception I've found being the visual layout tools of Flex Builder.

Other thoughts:

In my experience of both products, the pure AS3 code editor tools (hintng / autocompletion / templating) of FDT are well ahead of Flex Builder.
Some versions of FDT can inspect .swc files and provide code hints for compiled classes within (which I'm pretty sure Flex Builder can't do, I believe FlashDevelop can). This allows for workflows where
- designers create dummy classes for ui elements (through the 'linkage id' mechansim of the Flash IDE), use named MovieClips to identify ui elements etc
- design exports swc, which you include in your class path
- you extend these dummy classes with AS3 class code
- FDT will give you code hints for all named instances on a MovieClip's timeline.
You can compile, test and package AIR applications (pure AS3 or MXML-based) from within the IDE.

HughC 2010-04-29 07:50:12

> but if you're going to code AS3 for a living it will pay for itself in pretty short order. --- Yes - there's a huge difference in what's appropriate for a professional and a hobbyist. I write java for a living and am learning Flash as a hobby, so that colours my decisions.FDT does sound very impressive though - I particularly like what you say about it allowing a workflow which permits communication between programmers and artists. I used to work in multimedia using the now neglected Macromedia Director and one of its great strengths was that both programmers and artists could use it.

teapot7 2010-04-30 00:41:51

Have a quick look at this video: http://www.viddler.com/explore/video-flash/videos/8/Nothing else can do what FDT does, their tag line is "Pure coding pleasure", even if you're coding for a hobby, wouldn't you want it to be pleasurable?

jolyonruss 2010-04-30 09:37:21

Giving the tick to this one. All answers were helpful. None were what I was looking for :(

teapot7 2010-05-02 05:23:16

Also - the answer might possibly be 'try the AXDT plugin for Eclipse'. This supports ActionScript 3. I haven't given it a proper try yet, and don't know how actively it's being developed.

teapot7 2010-05-02 05:24:52

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