Compiling Flex Applications In Eclipse

Posted By : todd sharp Posted At : April 24, 2007 8:05 AM Posted In: Flex

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A few folks have commented on my entry about Setting up Eclipse for Flex 2 asking how to compile a Flex application from within Eclipse (without Flex Builder). I'd like to post a complete step-by-step guide on how to do so but the truth is it's already been done - so I'll just link to it here. For compiling I personally use Flex2Ant which is a very cool way to do this. The guide at Flex2Ant.org is very detailed and takes you through installing the jar file, creating a build.xml file and running the Ant task that compiles the SWF. I've found this method to work pretty flawlessly. There is a bit of extra work involved when deploying the project (you'll likely want to use one of the HTML wrappers that ship with the Flex 2 SDK). But then again you can't beat the price ($0.00).

Oh yeah - there's also a few options up at Labs for compiling. As I said above though, Flex2Ant works well for me so I really never felt the need to look into those solutions. Post a comment if you use them - or something else - to compile your SWFs.

Comments (7)

Luke's Gravatar Todd, glad to hear you like flex2ant. If you have any suggestions for improving flex2ant then please let know by sending a email to info {at} flex2ant [.] org.
I've been thinking about including Apollo functionality for completeness. I might do an update on the website in the next month or so depending on the amount of work necessary.

kzm's Gravatar flex compiler shell seems to increase builds by 50% i dont know if this applies with ant taks inside eclipse but i would be interested to see some real implementations in eclipse with that and some benchmark tests... dam thing i am to much of an dumb dude to do myself.. mama why?

martha flag's Gravatar Thanks for sharing this, it works great!

matt's Gravatar I'm new to flex/eclipse. I would like to do all flex development using eclipse. I've tried following the blog instructions to no avail. Do I need to buy flex builder in order for this to work? Someone help before I have no hair left!!

Stalin Selvam's Gravatar I have installed eclipse 3.4 and I have installed all the zip folders as mentioned in the post "emf-sdo-xsd-SDK-2.2.2.zip, GEF-SDK-3.2.2.zip, JEM-SDK-1.2.3_jem.zip, wtp-wst-R-1.5.3.zip ", could not able to find the xml catalog and I am was unable to find mxml.xsd, since I am using flex_sdk_3. Please email me how to setup flex with eclipse, since we want to work out this without flex builder.

Thanks for your help and support.

Kumar's Gravatar This is for Stalin Selvam. I did download Eclipse 3.4. I didn't see xml catalog as well. I then downloaded Eclipse IDE for Java and Report developers. Then I was able to see xml catalog.

Stalin Selvam's Gravatar Hi, Please let me know is there any way that we can have similar design view of flex builder in eclipse.. and please let me know to get the actionscript code hint in eclipse...