I mean like this:
shared/include.xml
<assets path="Assets" rename="assets" />
MyProject/project.xml
<include path="../shared" />
I’m lost, please can you explain this with an example?
Make a folder with your shared assets, make an “include.xml” file with relative paths to any assets you want in your shared stuff.
In your project, use an <include /> tag with the path to your shared directory, or the include.xml file directly. The tools will find the include.xml file and pull in the defines, haxelibs, assets and other things you put in your shared location
It works!
But… how the h**l does it find the shared folder even if I change the level of the complied folder path?! It is like magic, unless I missed something…
This is compile-time, so it’s relative to the location of your project.xml file 
And it works even if I copy the compiled project to another folder, at a different level, I am still wondering how this is possible… 
Anyway I will do other tests, mainly with post-build script to centralize the compiled projects: I will report the progress in Change compile path
Well, when it compiles, it copies the files into your Export directory, just as it would ordinarily. It just uses your shared XML file, so you don’t have to copy and paste all that stuff into all your project files
Oh s**t! I didn’t notice it (because the shared assets have the same folder structure of the local ones): no good, I have to share the same folder, not the same assets doplicated for each project!
Ouch… 
So these aren’t build-time dependencies, you want to share a common folder of assets on your server?
You could try using something like:
<assets path="assets" rename="../shared/assets" />
I’m not quite sure if the tools would be alright with this. You could also copy files yourself, and use Loader manually (like the good 'ole Flash days)
For now I am going to stay with the duplicated assets, they are just XML files and shouldn’t take much space on the server, I just need to update all of them each time I update the compiled projects on it.
Revive!
Now I am trying to use both shared assets and local assets, and I’d like to overwrite the shared ones with local ones, if they have the same name.
In my project.xml I have
<include path="../_SharedAssets/shared.xml" />
<assets path="Assets/Audio_MP3" type="audio" rename="Assets/Audio" unless="html5" />
<assets path="Assets/Audio_OGG" type="music" rename="Assets/Audio" if="html5" />
and shared.xml contains
<assets path="SharedAssets/Audio_MP3" type="audio" rename="Assets/Audio" unless="html5" />
<assets path="SharedAssets/Audio_OGG" type="music" rename="Assets/Audio" if="html5" />
I thought this would write SharedAssets/Audio_XXX to Assets/Audio, and then Assets/Audio_XXX to the same folder Assets/Audio, overwriting files with the same name.
What I find instead are the files from SharedAssets/Audio_XXX folder, so the possibilities are two:
- assets cannot be overwritten at compile-time
- include xml is processed AFTER the local assets
Do you know what is happening when compiling?
Try disabling the shared paths for a moment, and confirm if the files copy.
I have a feeling it’s using “copy if newer” logic, so it’s respecting the file modification time
Disabling include/shared paths I confirm files copy correctly. I also checked the files date: Assets files are newer than include/shared ones, but they are not overwritten over the shared ones.
Xml lines order is usually meaningless, so I think that include/shared tags are always processed before or after assets ones, anyway if it is true that the compiler keeps the newer files, how comes I have older versions of files that are in both include/shared and assets paths?
i.e.:
Assets/Audio (assets path) contains
- file1.ogg, 4-3-2015
- file2.ogg, 11-11-2015
SharedAssets/Audio (include path) contains
- file2.ogg, 9-9-2015
I will obtain
Assets/Audio containing
- file1.ogg, 4-3-2015
- file2.ogg, 9-9-12015
It would really help knowing if include paths are processed before or after assets ones: the test suggests that the order in the xml is not relevant, as I obtain the same result by setting both assets/include and include/assets order.
The XML processes down the list, but copies only on the “update” step after processing the project completely. Update currently uses “file is newer” logic. Perhaps we could disable this, though I assume it helps with performance when there are a lot of files?
An “overwrite” option for this could help:
- “newer” -> overwrite only newer files
- “order” -> overwrite files following xml order
And another combined option would help keeping the compiled project folder clean
cleanBeforeCopy, to delete and rewrite everything.
I think that performances change very few, I hardly distinguish the difference between an all new recompile (Flash and HTML5) and an “overwrite newer” one, maybe it is noticeable only for very big projects.
I know a project that copies more than a GB of data. That’s noticeable 
You could use -clean when building, but I understand it would be nice to not have to do this when switching. I’ll have to think about it – sources are an array of strings path at the moment, so adding a special property per path would require tool changes, though “always clean” would not, I suppose (since it would be global)
Like this
html5 -clean
?
yeah, openfl test html5 -clean will delete the output directory and re-copy all assets each time
In the target dropdown box?
Actually, in FlashDevelop, adding “-clean” in the target drop-down will break things, but I think in the project settings there is a “clean build” option. Use -clean if you are running from the command-line