I am using FlashBuilder, and wanted to know what is the highest version of the AIR SDK that i can install into FlashBuilder.
And since i am moving to a new Mac Mini, the OS will not allow me to run FlashBuilder any more (Apple cruelty once again refusing to let us run 32 bit apps even though it internally does), what tool is comparable to host the AS3 compiler on a mac? How can i debug as conveniently as i did with breakpoints and a way to list out the variables when stepping through the code like i did with FlashBuilder (which was a fork of Eclipse).
Hello there
Senior “as3” developer,
Nowadays, the “air SDK” is maintained and updated by “harman”,
The official website link is:“ Adobe AIR SDK from HARMAN ”.
It is said that the new “air SDK” is not compatible with old editors such as “FlashDevelop” and “FlashBuilder”,
Has been marked as’ abandoned '. The recommended editors now are “Idea” and “Visual Studio Code”. As far as I know, the “as3” plugin for these two editors is still being actively updated.
I have tested it and it worked with the Adobe’s Latest AIR SDK 32.
I think it worked with the earlier versions of Harman’s AIR SDK 33, but I switched to Visual Studio Code, so I don’t know up to which version Harman’s AIR SDK works.
From Harman’s release notes I can guess up to AIR 33 since it refers to Flash Builder. On the first version of AIR SDK 50 there is no reference of Flash Builder anymore.
The editor I am using is Visual Studio Code and works on Windows, MAC and Linux. It has breakpoints, watch expressions and many more. Also if there is something missing there is a huge variety of extensions you can install to add even more features.
Visual Studio Code and IntelliJ IDEA are probably your best choices for Adobe AIR development these days on both Windows and macOS (and, technically, I’ve been able to use on Linux too).
vscode-as3mxml and vscode-swf-debug are the extensions to get for Visual Studio Code (Disclosure: I’m the maintainer of both of these extensions).
And you’d use the Flash/Flex plugin for IntelliJ IDEA (this plugin is maintained by Jetbrains, the company behind IntelliJ IDEA).
If you have any time to help me get started, I would be most grateful. i can’t get VSCode to run the compiler properly; it doesn’t show syntax errors which means the language server is not working properly. I must have some slight config problem. I have messed around with Java, to no avail.
You install Java JDK 17 or 21, AIR SDK using AIR SDK Manager (recommended), Visual Studio Code and then the extensions joshtynjala mentioned.
The extensions are well documented, so you have to spend some time reading them.
There are detailed instructions and links here: Getting Started (AIR SDK)
@CodingFiend , I produced this Starling for ActionScript 3.0 tutorial for CodeAndWeb (TexturePacker) earlier this week.
It steps you through the process of getting your environment set up with Java, AIR SDK Manager, the AIR Package Manager and VS Code setup using @joshtynjala’s extensions.
If you’re not needing Starling and TexturePacker, you can obviously just skip those steps.
