Is there an easy way to build projects created in FlexBuilder via the command line?
I'm beginning to work on adding a couple Flex components to the project I have at work. Currently the rest of the project (some java, some C++) is built via an ant script. I'd really like to be able to integrate the builds for the Flex components I'm working on into that ant script, but I'm not sure how to build the Flex projects from the command line.
Is there a way to invoke the flex compiler from the command line such that it uses the flex builder's project as its configuration? Or is there a way to modify FlexBuilder's compilation so that I could write a build script for the project and then have it use that (so that I'd only have one way to build and have both ant and FB use that, instead of separate build processes)?
While a flex ant task would be preferable it's not really necessary, as I can create custom tasks from command line apps easily enough.
EDIT:
One additional thing that I should probably mention. While I have FlexBuilder installed some of the people who run that ant script do not. They would just have the normal Flex SDK.
You can use the -dump-config option in FB to dump the config.xml that FB is using to compile your project, and then use that (using the -load-config option) with your command-line build.
I know in regular Eclipse you can build from an ant file, and I'm pretty sure that you can do the same with FB.
Although the doc kind of stinks for the flex ant tasks, they work ok.
[EDIT]- I replied in the comments, but I wanted to flesh out my reply.
Herms is having a problem using -dump-config and -load-config and it kind of points out why the flex ant tasks are better. (I didn't want to be the guy who says "why do you want to do X?", so I just answered the asked question).
Even though their doc is subpar (imo), they're better suited for the task of building
your projects.
There are a couple of gotchas using the flex ant tasks, but for the most part, it's not brain surgery (and really the gotchas are more because the doc sucks).
When I started working on the automated build for our project, I found this site:
http://www.nabble.com/FlexCoders-f16212.html
to be invaluable.
Flex 3 comes with Ant tasks for building Flex applications from the command line. The documentation is available here. In addition, there is a great open source build framework called Antennae which can help a lot in organizing and building Flex applications from the command line (it is Ant-based).
I wrote a blog post on exactly how to do this (set Flex up with Ant) and have a sample build file. while I wrote this for Linux, the Ant part is platform agnostic. (see step 4):
http://blog.apterainc.com/software/setting-up-a-flex-development-enviroment-in-gnulinux/
If you need any help, leave comments and I can troubleshoot any problems you are having.
EDIT: Documentation for Flex's ant tasks are a bit sparse, but here are the official documentation from Adobe, is was enough to get me on my way: http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=anttasks_1.html
I started out with Antennae and was pretty disappointed when I realized it does not use the Flex Ant Tasks. To get what I needed I would've needed to hack the command line parameters it passes to mxmlc... and antennae doesn't support modules among other things that are easier to accomplish with the Flex Ant Tasks. anyway, what I did come up with is a mash up of the good aspects I found in antennae and the good aspects of the build files from this blog post:
http://jvalentino.blogspot.com/2010/03/flex-ant-build-optimized-modules_24.html
Related
I'm new to ROBOT framework and must create library keyword using java and utilize the JAR files in RIDE editor. I have followed the below steps. But still have confusions in where to start up. Please help me to achieve this.
Steps:
1) Installed Python, wxPython, pybot, RIDE, selenium2library successfully and I'm able to work with RIDE using predefined keywords.
2) For creating own java library, Installed Eclipse Mars, Java, ROBOT IDE manually using the link https://github.com/NitorCreations/RobotFramework-EclipseIDE/wiki/Installation
The question here is,
Anything i'm missing to install?
How to proceed further with Robot Framework coding?
Note: I'm reading many materials in parts to proceed things. But that is confusing me what are the steps to be followed. Is there any single material that i can get having the sequences of steps that need to be followed for my requirements?
The below links I referred with,
https://github.com/NitorCreations/RobotFramework-EclipseIDE/wiki/Usage
Maven error "Failure to transfer..."
Create a Maven project in Eclipse complains "Could not resolve archetype"
http://robotframework.org/robotframework/latest/RobotFrameworkUserGuide.html#using-set-test-suite-global-variable-keywords
Let's start with the basics. RIDE is an editor for Robot Script files. Robot Script files are executed by the Robot Framework robot application. It is important to understand the difference between these two applications. One creates files and the other uses them.
Assuming for a moment here that you have some custom functionality in a Jar file that you would like to make available inside the Robot Script files test cases. If this is indeed the case then your focus should be on create Robot Test Libraries. In the documentation there are numerous java examples given for basing your own library on.
This means that you do not need Maven, unless you want to, to create your library. Also Eclipse IDE is not needed nor is RIDE. The library you create can be used by Robot Framework even when it's run from the command line. Feel free to use them for what they are good at: writing Robot Scripts efficiently and running Robot through menu options instead of command line windows.
When you are familiar with Eclipse and comfortable with it's features, then I can also recommend using the Eclipse Application RED which is a mature Eclipse add on for creating, running and debugging Robot scripts.
There are two ways of implementing a Java routine in Robot Framework and it depends a bit on how you run Robot Framework: Python or Jython. Running Python means that you need to run the Java in a separate JVM container and connect to it. The simplest way is via Command Line interaction. This may cause some security concerns. The second approach is to use the Remote Library approach. A good example of this is the Robot Framework Sikuli Library. An added bonus is that you can run Robot and your Java application on two separate machines/servers.
The Jython way has been discussed on StackOverflow before and I gladly refer to it. Please bear in mind that although the examples refer to RIDE, the Library org.company.Keywordlibrary works in all IDE's, provided robot framework is run using Jython.
In the Jython documentation it clearly explains how to setup an Eclipse based IDE with Jython. Do keep in mind that it's recommended to use the same interpreter in development and production. I.e. if you create your scripts in Jython, do run them in 'production' also using Jython. Otherwise you open yourself up to interpreter differences where functionality does not work or behaves differently then expected.
An alternative approach with Jython is the all-in-one Robot Framework Maven JAR plugin. Adding a custom Java Library in this setup is not too difficult. A nice short tutorial can be found on the blog of Valerio Bruno. If this is your preferred route for development, then you may want to read the RED howto on integrating the Robot Framework Maven jar.
Working on your custom functionality is likely going to be a independent project in Eclipse, but can be linked to an Robot project via the Class Path settings in red.xml if you use RED or the CLASS_PATH environment variable.
Done! I have installed RED and required add on using following below steps. It worked successfully with predefined keywords. Now I'm gonna create user defined keywords/libraries using the same editor. I don't know where to start up. Will it work creating just a java project? Should I need to include any additional libraries?
Steps followed to proceed with RED:
1. RED Version Conclusion: https://github.com/nokia/RED/blob/master/release.md
2. RED Installation Instructions: https://github.com/nokia/RED/blob/master/installation.md
3. ROBOT Framework prerequisites using RED: https://github.com/nokia/RED/blob/master/red_help/first_steps/download_install.html.md
4. To verify Installations in Eclipse: Help -> Installation Details to check if RED is visible on installed features list
5. Create Project and Tests using RED in Eclipse: https://github.com/nokia/RED/blob/master/red_help/first_steps/create_run.html.md
6. RED Steps: https://github.com/nokia/RED/blob/master/First_steps.md
7. Quick STart: https://github.com/nokia/RED/blob/master/red_help/user_guide/quick_start.html.md
I have several Flex Builder projects which depend on each other (both libraries and "applications", i.e. projects which generate an SWF), and want to compile them from commandline. I know there is the fb.exportReleaseBuild ant-Task, but unfortunately it doesn't work on Linux and only comes with Flex Builder.
Is there any other way to build those projects, including their dependencies, from commandline?
One nifty toolset is Antenae which has templates for handling nested project with various library dependencies. It's basically bunch of Ant scripts that provide quite a high level of abstraction to the whole build process.
Yes, use the command line compiler in the Flex SDK. More info
You can use command line to compile flex projects. But you will have to enter the commands manually. Alternatively you can use ant build. Ant is available for GNU/Linux as well. Or which ever build you are comfortable with.
In working on larger Actionscript/Flash projects, I've started to really feel the need for some kind of "make" system, but I haven't found it yet. Does anyone know if it exists?
Required features:
Ability to associate SWCs with their source code and/or FLAs i.e. "this swc is compiled from this source"
Ability to mark my current project as depending on these SWCs (either as compile-time or runtime libraries)
A single, big shiny button, that when pressed does the following:
Checks to see if any of the source files have changed, and if so, recompiles their associated SWCs
Recompiles and relinks the main .swf, if necessary
Runs the main .swf
Have yet to find a way to get something like FlashDevelop to do this (but I don't know it well enough to be sure). Support for both code and FLA sources is preferred.
You are looking for http://projectsprouts.org/ which is based on Rake the Ruby version of Make. It can do all of that stuff and much more.
If you have Ruby and RubiGems installed which I think are installed by default on Macs you can install it by typing this into your command line.
sudo gem install Sprout
It will take a while because it installs many things. After this is all set you can create a project like this.
sprout -n as3 ProjectName
and then build it with this,
rake deploy
It manges things based on the runtime they are created for, this project was created for as3 but all of the other types of projects also. The build scripts are all writen in Ruby and can be modified to involve more complex multi-step compiles pretty simply. It also has a bunch of generators so that classes automaticly have unit test that are associated with them and many other features.
Might be a stupid suggestion, but if you want make, why not just use "make"? You can use it for any language by defining the right rules.
Apart from that, I've seen a lot of Flex/Actionscript projects use Apache ant, an XML based build system.
As said by wump; why not use Make?
There are some ANT scripts included in the Flex SDK, so you could explore and expand those. I've also spoken to people who use Maven and Cruise Control for automated build process.
Here is some info on Maven Flex: http://code.google.com/p/flex-mojos/
And some info on Cruise Control w/ Flex: http://www.eyefodder.com/blog/2006/05/continuous_integration_with_fl_5.shtml
Well, there are several options. One I would recommend is the Maven plugin for Flex flex-mojos, now maintained on the Sonotype site. If Maven isn't your cup of tea, they do have an Ant plugin, I don't know if NAnt can call Java Ant tasks directly or not. The third is the most complicated, but Adobe does include an OEM version of the compiler, I believe it comes by default with the SDK download. This is the one I used in the Maven plugin I developed for my company. The reason we didn't use the flex-mojos one basically boils down to a...disagreement about the "Maven way" of one project = one artifact. Their interpretation is that 1 SWF file is one artifact, so is one Maven project. My definition for my project is that all 80+ modules, each a SWF file, are no different than JSPs, all bundled in the same WAR file. So I've got one project with a LOT of modules and 1 maven pom.
You could check out Antpile which according to said link "is a collection of Ant Scripts which cover everything from building a SWF, SWC, AIR, Android and even Unit Testing."
I am new to Netbeans. I am wondering if someone can help me with project setup in netbeans. I am moving half million lines of Java code from a different IDE to Netbeans. I was able to get the code build and run in Netbeans easily. I have a project with many folders with dependencies among those folders. They have to be built in specific order. This is to enforce layering so that a module in lower layer cannot call into higher layers. I couldn't get that configured in Netbeans. Below is how my project looks like
project/
libA/
libB/
libC/
libD/
libE/
appA/
...
I have one project that builds all the libs and appA. The project build xml is stored under project/ folder. But the libs have dependencies among them. libB should be built after libA. libC after libA. libE depends on libD and libB etc.
I tried to change the order of source folders for libs in project properties. That didn't seem to make any difference. Even if I move libA after libB, it was building everything fine. I expected it to fail because libA didn't build yet.
Iam lost. Just wondering what the trick is to enforce this kind of dependencies. I created my project using "Java project using existing sources" wizard.
I appreciate your help
Thanks
Video guy.
Even though it would be a pain, you could just write your own ant build script and then just have Netbeans use that.
Basically:
write the custom ant build file
install the Ant plugin
create an Ant build file
right click the build file
run the selected target.
This would enable you to enforce whatever you need to do, but, if Netbeans is figuring out the correct order then why not just use it.
Does something break when you just compile and run in Netbeans?
Well! Lets say a team member added piece of code in lower level package that calls into higher layer code. It should fail because it breaks the layering. Because Netbeans seem to compile all the files in one javac invocation, the build compiles just fine. I want Netbeans to break the build in this case.
Writing my own ant script is another way of enforcing it. The whole point in using an IDE is to save yourself from writing your own make files (or ant scripts). This is something any IDE was able to accomplish 10 years back out of the box. I am wondering if I am missing something here.
Thanks
Video Guy
I'm using Flexbuilder as an IDE, and I'm working on automating the process of building my application.
In the process of setting up the ant build file, I noticed that there's no way to call the project using the list of dependancies that Flex builder stores - each library or library project has to be added to the flex compiler commands manually. This creates an enormous burden on the developers to update the build scripts, and makes the build process very uncomfortably fragile.
Is there an option or third party project that addresses this? Failing that, is it possible to build using Flex builder's process via command line?
This answer might be of use.
automating component libraries