Flash development on Linux

Recently I am getting more and more interested in flash development. Since the adoption of actionscript 3 (as3) as programming language Flash is becoming more and more a serious option to develop applications

The main inconvenient that I find is the fact that the development tools are almost just available for the Windows environment. This is an operating system that I stopped using almost two years ago, and I do not have any intention to come back to such family of operating systems.

I am into free software, so I will try to do flash development based on open source tools as much as I can.

This is my development environment:
A four years old Pentium IV based computer, running a 32 bit version of Ubuntu 9.04

Eclipse (you will need to have Java -JRE- installed in order to run Eclipse)
AXDT: This is a set of plug-ins for the Eclipse platform that enables the user to write ActionScript3 code in such a framework.

We can start having a look at the installation instructions on the AXDT site.

The first step is to download the "Eclipse IDE for Java Developers". In our particular case, we will choose the 32bit Linux version (eclipse-java-galileo-linux-gtk.tar.gz)

Then we will have to uncompress that somewhere on our hard disk. We have chosen to install it on the /opt directory.


$ sudo tar -C /opt -xzf java-galileo-linux-gtk.tar.gz


After that, we launch the Eclipse application. First thing will be to choose the workspace directory. We can maintain the default option: just a directory called "workspace" under our home directory.

In the menu, we choose Help -> Install new software...

Click on the "Add..." button, and type the following:

Name: Eclipse IMP
Location: http://download.eclipse.org/technology/imp/updates/



On the lower right corner of the main Eclipse window, you will see an indicator. The program is getting a list of available software components. Some seconds after that, it will show you those components. Do not choose anyone in this moment, and continue to the next step.

Name: AXDT
Location: http://update.axdt.org/



Choose (at least) the following packages:
Axdt AS3 Feature
Flex3SDK Feature



Then click on the "Next >" button, accept the licence and proceed to install the AXDT + Flex SDK framework.

If the system complains about unsatisfied dependencies or requirements, be sure to have installed the basic packages of the Eclipse base environment. I have found in some installations that such repositories are not initially enabled.

Name: Galileo
Location: http://download.eclipse.org/releases/galileo

Name: Eclipse project
Location: http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/updates/3.5

Once installed, restart Eclipse

Go to the menu: Window -> Open perspective -> Other... -> AXDT



You are now ready to start to develop Flash / Flex programs on your Linux box. You can find a simple example of how to compile your first Flash program on Linux.