Automating ActionScript Projects with Eclipse and Ant

Directly Calling the Compiler

When you’re developing in FDT, there are a few ways to compile your ActionScript projects: calling the compiler directly from the Flex SDK, compiling directly from FDT, or combining both approaches.

You are free to use the method you prefer—whichever gives you more freedom to do what you want. I will go through each of them.

You can directly call the compiler or make use of FDT’s internal Ant tasks (more on the latter option in Using FDT’s Ant Tasks).

Note

When you want to call the compiler directly, you need to have a copy of the Flex SDK, which can be found at Adobe’s open source site: http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Downloads.

Downloading the Flex SDK

Installing an SDK is easy: just download and extract the files. I place mine in the root of my hard drive in a folder called SDK and differentiate them by version number, as shown in Figure 3-10.

Figure 3-10. Organized folder structure with all SDKs

This way, I have all the SDKs I need, neatly organized in one folder (also a time-saver!). Once you have extracted the SDK, you need to go over to FDT and add the new SDK.

If you haven’t done so already, create a new AS3 project in FDT by going to File→New→New Flash Project, and give it a name you prefer. You can change the SDK used by right-clicking on the newly created project (the blue folder with the big F in it) and selecting Flash Project→Change ...