What tools do I need to develop in actionscript (in Linux)

Question

I've never developed flash before but I have a project where I want to use an actionscript 3 library and I'm not sure what tools I need to start. To further complicate things my main development box is an ubuntu box. Are there any necessary packages I need to install? Or any .deb's I can buy?

Thanks

Answer 1

It looks like the Flex 3 sdk (http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/flexdownloads/index.html) is a good place to start. Any other suggestions?

Answer 2

A Windows or Mac box. :-)

just kidding, actually you can use the Flex 3 SDK mentioned above and compile using the CLI. If these AS3 Libraries are indeed Flex libraries (sometimes there are discrepancies between what works in Flex, what works in CS3, and what works in both) then you should be able to import them and use them.

Also, I've never tried it myself, but Flex Builder is based on Eclipse and I believe there's a way to configure Eclipse to compile with the opensource Flex compile if you'd rather work in a graphical IDE.

Answer 3

I use the Flex SDK, Emacs (Sub your editor of choice) and Ant as my build tool. I blogged about how to get everything set up here:

http://blog.apterainc.com/software/setting-up-a-flex-development-enviroment-in-gnulinux/

Adobe has an free alpha release of FlexBuilder for Linux, I thought it was quite unstable when editing MXML files, but if your doing strict actionscript work, you may find it useful. you can get that here:

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flex/flexbuilder_linux/

Answer 4

I've been using Flex Builder Linux recently and can recommend it. It's straightforward to get going and, for an alpha, is stable and has all the features you could want.

Answer 5

You might like to have a look at MTASC http://www.mtasc.org/ An open source action script compiler. I've been meaning to get around to looking at it but not had the chance yet. Heard great things about it tho. Hopefully when I do get around to it and have questions you'll be around to answer them

Answer 6

While FlexBuilder is good, it lacks many of the features that Powerflasher includes in FDT (Flash Developer Tools) for Eclipse. FlexBuilder is missing things like Templates, better formatting, auto-fixing of warnings and errors. It runs on Eclipse making it cross platform, but be warned that they do not test in a linux environment (however people have had no significant complaints).

See all the features here: http://solutions.powerflasher.com/index.php?id=136#feature_03

Answer 7

You could try haXe. It isn't really ActionScript but it is very similar (and you could also compile to the server side or javascript): haXe.org

Answer 8

I've had very good experiences with Sprouts. It is a ruby wrapper for the Flex SDK that allows building with Rake and easily hooks into continuous integration engines.

http://www.projectsprouts.com/

Answer 9

I have written a blog entry on how to setup Eclipse + AXDT + Flex SDK to prepare your mxml/actionscript (as3) development environment on Linux. If you are interested, you can have a look here: http://netpatia.blogspot.com/2009/09/flash-development-on-linux.html