Flex development on Linux

Hey guys, I hope there are lot of guys who are relying on linux distro like Ubuntu, centos or fedora to name some. As far as the developers, geeks and machine fanatics are concerned. Aftyer such an addiction it’s quite difficult to work back on Windows system for some specific reasons like previous was the case as flash development is restricted to windows based machines. But now as adobe took a nice decision to move to bit to open source society with their new open source flexsdk the dream to develop flash based application on the linux island come true. Now with a handful of simple plugins our distro will be up and ready to develop application in flash and actionscript.

1. Download the eclipse euorpa with JEE support (v3.2 or higher)
Visit the following link http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/
Look for Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers
32bit: http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php?file=/technology/epp/downloads/release/helios/R/eclipse-jee-helios-linux-gtk.tar.gz
64bit: http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php?file=/technology/epp/downloads/release/helios/R/eclipse-jee-helios-linux-gtk-x86_64.tar.gz

or get a torrent: http://build.eclipse.org/technology/phoenix/torrents/jee/eclipse-jee-helios-linux-gtk.tar.gz.torrent

Move the tar file into /opt dir
# sudo mv eclipse-*.tar /opt

Untar the eclipse compress file
# sudo tar zxvf eclipse-*.tar
# sudo cd eclipse
# ./eclipse &

2. Install the following plugins

In the menu, we choose Help -> Install new software…

Click on the “Add…” button, and type the following:

Name: Eclipse IMP
Location: http://download.eclipse.org/technology/imp/updates/

Name: AXDT
Location: http://update.axdt.org/

Choose (at least) the following packages:
Axdt AS3 Feature
Flex3SDK Feature

Then click on the “Next >” button, accept the licence and proceed to install the AXDT + Flex SDK framework.

Once installed, restart Eclipse

Go to the menu: Window -> Open perspective -> Other… -> AXDT

That’s all what you need to get started with Flas application development.

Coming soon

Tutorial: Write and compile you first flex application

Flash-player for Mozilla Firefox

I thing firefox should struggle a bit to make a contract with adobe on this regards which will save our time but in the mean while see the below methods to do it yourself.

From the tar file:-

unpack anywhere (as a root user)

# tar -zxvf install_flash_player_10_linux.tar.gz

Run the script

# ./flashplayer-installer

Copyright(C) 2002-2006 Adobe Macromedia Software LLC.  All rights reserved.

Adobe Flash Player 10 for Linux

Adobe Flash Player 10 will be installed on this machine.

You are running the Adobe Flash Player installer as a non-root user.
Adobe Flash Player 10 will be installed in your home directory.

Support is available at http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/

To install Adobe Flash Player 10 now, press ENTER.

To cancel the installation at any time, press Control-C.

NOTE: Please exit any browsers you may have running.

Press ENTER to continue…

———– Install Action Summary ———–

Adobe Flash Player 10 will be installed in the following directory:

Mozilla installation directory  = /home/username/.mozilla

Proceed with the installation? (y/n/q): y

NOTE: Please ask your administrator to remove the xpti.dat from the
components directory of the Mozilla or Netscape browser.

Installation complete.

Perform another installation? (y/n): n

The flash plugin is installed now!

Or if the tar file just have the lib proceed with the following

copy unpacked ‘libflashplayer.so’ to ‘/usr/lib64/browser-plugins’ directory

# cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/browser-plugins

set permissions: ‘chmod 755 /usr/lib64/browser-plugins/libflashplayer.so’

# chmod 755  /usr/lib/browser-plugins/libflashplayer.so

From the repository:-

In Redhat :

# up2date  flash-plugin

In Suse:

# zypper in flash-player

Retrieving repository ‘openSUSE-11.2-Non-Oss’ metadata [\]

Expected errors:

System management is locked by the application with pid 4399 (/usr/sbin/packagekitd).
Close this application before trying again.

Fix:

Kill the process and rerun the command

# kill -9 <PID>

In Ubuntu:

Just visit youtube.com and a pop=up will appear asking you to install the required flash plugin it’s that simple!

Confirmation:

To confirm successful installation launch your Firefox browser and in the address bar type “about:plugins” and press enter.

Caution:

To install the plugin successfully it is advised to close all the instances of the firefox before running the plugin