boostworthyisryantaylor

Tutorial: FlashDevelop + ANT + Apollo Template

March 27th, 2007 | Category: Dirty South

This tutorial goes hand in hand with the Apollo template for FlashDevelop that I posted a few days ago.

What you will need to get setup:

Ok, first things first - make sure you have downloaded each of the above and extracted their files into the directories of your liking.

For ANT, you will need to add a path to your environment variables so that it can be accessed without writing out the path in the commandline. To do this, you will need to right click on 'My Computer' and select 'Properties'. Click the 'Advanced' tab at the top, then click the 'Environment Variables' button at the bottom of the window. In the bottom panel, there should be a variable called 'Path'. Select it and click the 'Edit' button. Add the path to the directory where you installed ANT plus '\bin'. If you added it to the end of the text field, make sure and add a semi-colon to the end of the previous path. This is similar to what you should see:

My Computer > Properties > Advanced > Environment Variables

Next, you will need to create a way to run your ANT build from FlashDevelop. Inside the FlashDevelop application folder, there is a folder called 'Settings'. Inside the 'Settings' folder you will find all of the XML files for customizing FlashDevelop. To add a button to the tool bar for ANT, open the 'ToolBar.xml' file. Here is what your new button node should look like:

CODE:
  1. <button label="ANT Build" click="PluginCommand" image="54" tag="Run;SaveAll;ant" shortcut="CtrlF7" />

Note that you can set any shortcut you please for this action, however you should check the program settings to make sure that you aren't overwritting one that already exists. You can always change the FlashDevelop shortcuts around as you see fit.

Ok, your ANT integration with FlashDevelop is ready to go. Now you need to open up the 'build.properties' file that is located in my Apollo template. Towards the bottom of the file, you will see some settings for the Flex 2 SDK and Apollo SDK install paths that look like these:

CODE:
  1. flex2.dir=C:/Program Files/Adobe/Flex_2_SDK
  2. apollo.dir=C:/Program Files/Adobe/Apollo

Go ahead and update these paths with the paths that you actually used for these applications. That's basically it! Now each time you create a new project, the first thing you should do is go into the 'build.properties' file for that project and update the settings at the top for the AIR file name, documentation name, output file, etc.

Also note that it is in this file that you can toggle the launch method to either test or publish your AIR file as seen below.

CODE:
  1. # Values are 'test' or 'air'.
  2. # test - Launches your Apollo app without packaging an AIR file.
  3. # air - Publishes your Apollo app as an AIR file and generates documentation.
  4. launchmethod=test

What actually happens now when you click the ANT button you added (or use it's associated shortcut key) is ANT gets called and uses the 'build.xml' file in the project directory to perform a sequence of tasks for you, thus automating your build process. To be able to click a button and get your project compiled to a SWF, packaged as an AIR file, then documentation generated for all of your source is a beautiful thing; that is why the template is so useful.

Hopefully I didn't miss anything. If you have any questions, post away.

20 Comments so far

  1. boostworthyisryantaylor » Apollo FlashDevelop Template March 27th, 2007 11:07 pm

    [...] [Update March 28, 2007] I posted a tutorial to go along with this template that explains the setup of FlashDevelop and ANT, as well as configuring this template. [/Update] [...]

  2. Apollo mit FlashDevelop....KEIN PROBLEM mehr « boyne.developing March 28th, 2007 11:38 am

    [...] Apollo mit FlashDevelop….KEIN PROBLEM mehr boostworthyisryantaylor » Tutorial: FlashDevelop + ANT + Apollo Template [...]

  3. lazylittleprince April 10th, 2007 6:09 pm

    Thank you for this nice template for use in Flash Develop. How can we use mxml to build an Apollo application with this set up ? as we do in Flex Builder. I am not good in setting these kind of stuff :- thank you ...

  4. Ryan Taylor April 10th, 2007 10:18 pm

    In the project's 'build.properties' file, simply change the 'source.file' property to point towards your application's mxml file.

  5. Thomas Hooper April 12th, 2007 7:34 pm

    Hey there, I'm new to flex flashdevelop and apollo.
    I Managed to get it working, and succesfully managed to do a 'hello world' with App.as, great! :D

    I then tried to move to using mxml and I'm getting the following errors in the output panel:
    Error: null
    java.lang.NullPointerException
    at macromedia.asc.semantics.InterfaceWalker.processQueue(InterfaceWalker.java:75)
    at macromedia.asc.semantics.InterfaceWalker.(InterfaceWalker.java:27)
    at macromedia.asc.semantics.InterfaceWalker.(InterfaceWalker.java:17)
    at macromedia.asc.semantics.FlowAnalyzer.scanInterfaceMethods(FlowAnalyzer.java:5997)
    at macromedia.asc.semantics.FlowAnalyzer.evaluate(FlowAnalyzer.java:4858)
    at macromedia.asc.parser.BinaryClassDefNode.evaluate(BinaryClassDefNode.java:22)
    at macromedia.asc.semantics.FlowAnalyzer.evaluate(FlowAnalyzer.java:2577)
    at macromedia.asc.parser.ProgramNode.evaluate(ProgramNode.java:63)
    at flex2.compiler.abc.Compiler.analyze2(Compiler.java:299)
    at flex2.compiler.API.analyze(API.java:2360)
    at flex2.compiler.API.analyze(API.java:2275)
    Result: 1
    at flex2.compiler.API.batch2(API.java:337)
    at flex2.compiler.API.batch(API.java:1025)
    at flex2.compiler.API.compile(API.java:1211)
    at flex2.compiler.API.compile(API.java:1114)
    at flex2.tools.Compiler.main(Compiler.java:222)

    using the mxml:

    Application
    {
    background-image:"";
    background-color:"";
    background-alpha:"0.5";
    }

    Am I missing something obvious?

  6. Thomas Hooper April 12th, 2007 7:43 pm

    mxml didn't come out properly in the comments, it's the code detailed here:
    http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Apollo:Documentation:Create_your_first_Flex-based_Apollo_application_using_the_Apollo_SDK

  7. Ryan Taylor April 12th, 2007 9:14 pm

    Try adding this argument for the compiler in the 'build.xml' file:

    CODE:
    1. <arg line="-source-path '${basedir}/${mx.dir}'" />

  8. Thomas Hooper April 14th, 2007 9:13 am

    Thanks, that did something... I now get the following errors:

    src\apollo\classes\mx\core\ApolloApplication.as
    (421): col: 48 Error: The definition of base class Application was not found.
    (764): col: 34 Error: Method marked override must override another method.
    (841): col: 35 Error: Method marked override must override another method.
    (930): col: 35 Error: Method marked override must override another method.
    (1140): col: 33 Error: Method marked override must override another method.
    (1192): col: 33 Error: Method marked override must override another method.
    (1225): col: 33 Error: Method marked override must override another method.
    (1241): col: 33 Error: Method marked override must override another method.

    src\apollo\classes\mx\core\Version.as
    (16): col: 1 Error: Namespace was not found or is not a compile-time constant.

  9. Ryan Taylor April 14th, 2007 1:03 pm

    Ok, I figured out what the deal is. The Apollo framework extends upon the Flex framework and I don't have a source path pointing to that in the template build file. I'm going to post an updated version that is both Flash and Flex friendly today. Thanks for bringing this stuff to my attention, I really appreciate it.

  10. Thomas Hooper May 17th, 2007 2:06 pm

    Hey there, just got around to testing your new template (over a month later - my flex builder trial expired!) and I'm coming up with some new errors!

    Error: Unable to resolve a class for ResourceBundle: core.
    Error: Unable to resolve a class for ResourceBundle: core.
    Error: Unable to resolve a class for ResourceBundle: core.
    Error: Unable to resolve a class for ResourceBundle: core.
    Error: Unable to resolve a class for ResourceBundle: styles.
    Error: Unable to resolve a class for ResourceBundle: core.
    Error: Unable to resolve a class for ResourceBundle: effects.
    Error: Unable to resolve a class for ResourceBundle: skins.

    I'm using the same code as before, do these mean anything to you?
    Thanks for reviewing the last lot by the way :)

  11. Ryan Taylor May 20th, 2007 12:59 am

    Can you confirm that you configured the 'build.properties' file to correctly point towards all the necessary install paths on your machine? It sounds like it's having an issue finding either the library of SWC files for Apollo or maybe even Flex.

  12. Thomas Hooper May 21st, 2007 1:56 pm

    Confirmed. I have them installed to your default paths.

    As before, it works fine compling the App.as, it only has this problem when trying the 'hello Apollo' mxml.

  13. Micha May 24th, 2007 6:03 am

    same here - App.as works like a charm, with the app.mxml file i am getting the same error as Thomas. any solution? thanks!

  14. Ryan Taylor May 25th, 2007 9:43 am

    Sorry guys, I have been slammed with various work and haven't had a chance to investigate the mxml issue. I will look into it and post up my findings as soon as I get some spare time.

  15. Reiem illustration design June 2nd, 2007 12:32 pm

    I've finally been able to compile a mxml file.

    1) the templates doesn't works with FD v3Beta (because RunCommand plugin doesn't works), so I created a .bat file to execute ant:
    %ANT_HOME%\bin\ant -buildfile "%CD%\build.xml" -logfile here.txt -verbose

    2) I removed all other source paths leaving only what was needed. There was a conflict among all of them:

    And that's it! I changed the source.file, output.file and the reference in application.xml
    Thanks for the template!!

  16. Gordon C. June 12th, 2007 12:02 pm

    I got the same "Unable to resolve" error and made the following additions:

    To the build.properties I added:

    flexlib.dir=frameworks/libs
    flexlocale.dir=frameworks/locale/en_US

    You'll need to change "en_US" if you have a different locale.

    To the build.xml I added these under the current -library-path call:

    That did it.

    Thanks a ton for the template, Ryan.

  17. Gordon C. June 12th, 2007 12:05 pm

    Ack, looks like it removed my additions to the build.xml - I wasn't thinking about the tags. Ok, let me try this again:

    <arg line="-library-path
    '${flex2.dir}/${flexlib.dir}'" />
    <arg line="-library-path
    '${flex2.dir}/${flexlocale.dir}'" />

  18. Ryan Taylor June 12th, 2007 11:23 pm

    Great, thanks for looking into that issue guys. I apologize for not getting around to it myself; I have been quite busy lately.

  19. Micha June 15th, 2007 5:14 am

    Yeah, that did it indeed. Thanks a lot Gordon and Ryan!

  20. Thomas Hooper June 19th, 2007 5:07 pm

    Horray :) Got it working, thanks guys :)

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