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If you ever wanted to create stunning flash effects and animations, but the huge amount of money to put into Flash or Flex authoring software kept you away from doing so you’ll be happy to hear:

Flash is free now! Okay, not really, but at least there is an ActionScript 3.0 compiler for free.

Enthusiasm gone? Come on, remember the good old coding days spending hours searching through manuals instead of finding the right gui tab to click on. But mind the positive. Speed and a huge open source community. So let’s start off.

1. Download compiler

Well first you have to download the free Flex SDK that includes the compiler. Flex SDK? Yeah, not only Flash uses AS, so does Flex and AIR:

• http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/flexdownloads/

Now unpack the zip to a folder and move it to a folder the compiler can rest like your app folder. I recommend renaming it to a pretty name, in my case flex_sdk.

Now if you’re on Windows you can be happy and mock the Mac and Linux Guys jumping to step 3.

2. Create startup script (OS X and Linux only)

Actually there is a startup script for the java compiler. The Windows mxmlc.exe simply calls it, but in the OS X and Linux environment there’s often an error:

• bad interpreter: No such file or directory

That’s got something to do with line-endings and stuff, and it is fixable somehow but i decided to simply write my own little bash script wherein I set the paths to the compiler once, and voila, trouble’s gone.

ascompiler in /Users/funkalicious/flash/flex_sdk

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#! /bin/sh
 
#ActionScript 3.0 Compiler using the free mxmlc Java compiler
 
#setup
as=$1;
 
compiler="/Users/funkalicious/flash/flex_sdk/lib/mxmlc.jar"; #set path here
flexlib="/Users/funkalicious/flash/flex_sdk/frameworks"; #set path here
 
if test -r $as
	then
 
	#compile
	echo Compiling $as...
	java -Xmx384m -Dsun.io.useCanonCaches=false -jar $compiler +flexlib=$flexlib $as
	exit 1;
 
else
	echo $as not found...
	exit 0;
fi

3. Compile ActionScript 3.0

Welcome back Windows Guys. You might have missed one important piece of information. Whatever happens, in the end you’ll compile with the java compiler. So let’s start compiling:

• Windows: /bin/mxmlc.exe YourActionScriptDocumentClass.as
• OS X and Linux: ./ascompiler YourActionScriptDocumentClass.as

Now it might take a while to startup the Java Virtual Machine in the background but you’ll notice a wonderful *.swf file as it is finished. Completely free!

Additionally it’s to be said that all dependencies are compiled automatically too, so you don’t have to juggle around with linkage and stuff, just pass it the Document Class and all will be fine.

Without a trace?

Here’s the big but. You already searched one, right? Yeah, it’s pretty unlikely that Adobe delivers us super comfortable code editing in our favourite editor without even spending a dollar. The problem is the tracing. When I develop flash apps I often spend hours watching dump traced out variable contents while shuffling around in my swf. But even if it might sound 1.0, it’s way better than having no output at all.

And that’s the problem. The standard flash player, standalone or not, simply doesn’t provide a console. There is a debug version of the player but it’s also impossible there. You’ll have to put a TextField on the Main Stage or use some kind of third party plugins. But I’ll be back on that topic soon.

• Update: Read this article for a fantastic trace tool : ActionScript 3.0 – Trace MXMLC compiled movies

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