actionscript development on mac

Question

I know of FlashDevelop for windows but how about developing actionscript or haxe on a mac? besides flex plugin for eclipse, flex builder and FDT is there anny good IDE out there for actionscript development on mac? I would really like to se a good plugin for netbeans but it looks like all the projects on making something like this has halted.

I have tried using MacVim with various plugins but i never get it to work and it looks to be a hard learning curve to get starting using vim.

What is people using to develop actionscript/haxe on a mac?

Clef

I'm curious about that too. I'm using Flex Builder and don't know any alternative except Eclipse and FDT. – Quaquaversal

One year later, I wonder how are the updates on this issue. – Beachcomber

I am no longer using mac for flash developing as i have moved to linux with fb4linux. There have been some updates on netbeans plugin but nothing ready to be used yet i think. – Clef

Anything new here? Looking for some answers too – Bossy

Answer 1

I use TextMate with the ActionScript bundle. But, that is a far cry from a decent development environment.

FlashBuilder or FDT are probably the best options. I've spent a lot of time looking for a good free option - though I haven't done a check in the last 6 months, or so. The actual Flash IDE might be the best no-additional-cost option, if you use Flash.

There is supposedly a way to set up your environment to use XCode, a stand-alone compiler, and one or two other things, but I could never find good documentation or evidence of someone actually getting things working.

There is, or was, a Mac version of SePy, but it was horrible, as of a year and a half ago when I gave up on it.

I've been using FlashBuilder on my work machine for Flex work, but I think I'll start using it on my personal machine for Flash work. Just haven't come across anything else that even approaches a modern dev environment for Flash.

Sorry I don't have more helpful information. Would love to hear someone say different.

UPDATE: Found some so-so info on setting up various elements of a full development environment on Mac, using free tools. Doesn't look like a lot has happened on this front in the last two years.

OpenCode - AS2 and AS3 language definitions for XCode. This goes back to 2006, but may still be completely useful.

Xcode and the Flex SDK - A tutorial on setting up a code and compile environment with XCode and the mxml compiler. Author notes that the information may not be 100% accurate and lost interest once he started using FlexBuilder.

Make Xcode a Full Featured Actionscript IDE - FlaXIDE - A tutorial on setting up a full dev environment with opensource tools. Last updated in 2006. Could be modified to work with current tools (i.e. haxe instead of mtasc).

Flex Support for Xcode 3 - Somewhat more recent info on using Xcode as an AS editor. Posted November of 2007.

Core SWF: Flex/AS3 for Xcode - Even more recent info. This seems to be the latest thing going for using open source or free tools to build an AS dev environment on the Mac. Posted July of 2008. This project is up on Google Code and contributors are welcomed.

Statfarad

Answer 2

I have heard good things about IntelliJ IDEA lately but haven't really tried it out myself. I use TextMate, the AS3 bundle and Flash CS4.

The best thing would probably be if FlashDevelop was ported to Mac, but as I understand it, that is not about to happen, despite years of requests for it.

Osteitis

I think that FlashDevelop is made using .net and the only hope to get that working on a mac is that mono gets better, so that we can emulate the .net enviroment. This would be quite good but i guess the best way to get FlashDevelop to mac is to port the application all-togehter to cocoa or qt or something similar but this is probably unlikely to happen. – Clef

Answer 3

For Haxe, I'm using gedit on both Mac and Ubuntu. There is a plugin for Haxe which includes syntax highlighting and code completion.

For installing the plug-in on Mac, put the folder "haxecodecompletion" and the file "haxecodecompletion.gedit-plugin" inside "/Applications/gedit.app/Contents/Resources/lib/gedit-2/plugins". Similar for the syntax highlight but a different folder.

Heckle

This is actually a really good alternative, i was unsuccessfull in making the codecompletion work on my mac, for some reason it just got grey'd out once i try to activate it. I am currently using a old computer with linux and synergy to use it together with my mac. This is working good with gedit although i get wierd output from gedit were it puts random characters to the file im working on, might have something to do with that im working directly on a nas drive mounted with autofs. – Clef

Maybe you're missing some python packages? You can try open terminal and type "python" to get into the interactive shell. And then type "import re", "import logging", "import subprocess", "import os" to see if there is import error come out? – Heckle

Answer 4

Check out the "sugar-hx" textmate bundle. There's an overview here: http://haxe.org/com/ide/textmate/sugar_hx_textmate

It includes the compiler-based contextual autocompletion, import helpers, build helpers, and output embedding for swf and js.

Ned

Answer 5

I know this is old, but I stumbled upon it, so I suppose other people might as well.

I'm using Sublime Text 2 for AS3 development, and I'm quite happy with it. I use alongside the Flash IDE.

http://www.sublimetext.com/

It's a very powerful and customizable text editor. It's similar to TextMate but much faster and modern... and also cross platform. Many people (like me) got fed up waiting for TextMate 2, and started using ST2.

ST2 is way too deep to number all it's features, but here's a good introduction: https://tutsplus.com/course/improve-workflow-in-sublime-text-2/

Instead of bundles or plugins, there are packages. ST2 includes a basic AS3 package, but many people are developing their own. Here's mine (still in beta):

https://github.com/PierBover/as3-utils

Haemagglutinate

Answer 6

There is Flasm (which is a working AS2 Disassembler) and perhaps with permission by its creator, who is not updating, re-produce it into an AS3 Disassembler?

I have had this working, and was for me as close to RABCDAsm / Yogda as I could get.

Rendarender

oops sorry :( Should have read further. ""It's unlikely I'll ever add support for Flash 9. As you may know, Flash Player 9 contains the new virtual machine, which is nothing like the old one. I see it as a natural end of Flasm's life cycle — supporting that would in fact mean writing another Flasm from scratch."" – Rendarender