What IDE should I use for Apache Flex?

Question

Since Flex has moved to open source project, I am totally lost with Flex future and Flex devlopment. I worked on Flex4.6 before but I don't underand anything about the Apache flex project.

Here are my questions

1) what is exactly Flex open source ? Does it include a IDE ?

2) What IDE should I use for Flex devlopment ?

3) Can I keep on using Flex4.6 for apache Flex ?

4) Is there a Visual WYSIWYG available somewhere ? (since it was removed in flex4.7)

5) It seems Adobe keeps on improving AIR, but not Flex anymore. What is AIR for without Flex ?

That's a lot of questions about Flex. Hope someone can help me, beacuse I don't know if Flex is dead or not.

Answer 1

There's no point in me repeating what RIAstar provided, as it's all accurate.

Regarding IDE and a visual designer, I will say that as a long time dedicated Flex/Flash Builder user, I'm ready to jump off that ship. Adobe's awkward and mismanaged open-sourcing of the Flex SDK and their piss poor handling of the Flash runtime (with some help from Apple bias) has pretty much torpedoed that vessel. I expect Adobe to pull the plug on Flash Builder entirely after Apache Flex 5 is released (I could be wrong here, but they've given us little reason to hope for anything better).

In the future I'll be looking at IntelliJ, Flash Develop, or FDT. I believe IntelliJ has some sort of UI layout assistance (which I think is almost essential for certain types of 'enterprise' apps).

Answer 2

what is exactly Flex open source?

Flex version 2 through version 4.6 were open-source--under a Mozilla license--when it was managed by Adobe (meaning you could browse the code, register issues in the bug tracker and perhaps even submit patches). It has since been donated by Adobe to the Apache foundation and current versions are released under the more liberal Apache License. The Apache Foundation also makes it easier to submit patches, write docs and examples, do some marketing or whatever you like to support the project, and when you've made enough contributions you'll probably be asked to become a committer (which means you'll have full read/write access to the source code).

Does it include a IDE?

No, and it never has. FlashBuilder (and FlexBuilder before that) was just another Adobe product that was sold separately. As I said in the previous bullet: the Flex SDK was already free.

What IDE should I use for Flex development?

There's FlashBuilder, IntelliJ IDEA, FDT and FlashDevelop. My personal preference lies with IntelliJ and a lot of Flex developers are jumping ship since Adobe isn't likely to put much effort in further Flex support in FlashBuilder (4.7 was a disaster already). I wouldn't recommend FlashDevelop for "enterprise" type Flex apps.

Can I keep on using Flex4.6 for apache Flex?

That question doesn't make much sense. Under the Apache umbrella the first version of the Flex SDK was 4.8, which was just a parity version of Adobe Flex 4.6. New features and bugfixes have since been added and we're now at version 4.11. Apache Flex is just an evolution of Adobe Flex.

You can use Apache Flex versions with Adobe Flash Builder if that was your intended question.

Is there a Visual WYSIWYG available somewhere ? (since it was removed in flex4.7)

There is no such thing as Flex 4.7. There is FlashBuilder 4.7 which is an IDE for development with Flex. The feature was removed because of its high maintenance cost. There are some attempts at other tools out there, but nothing really stable.

It seems Adobe keeps on improving AIR, but not Flex anymore. What is AIR for without Flex?

AIR without Flex will now probably primarily be used for (mobile) game development or perhaps app development with FeathersUI (which supports GPU acceleration as opposed to Flex). That said, it is still compatible with Flex and I think Adobe has even 'committed' to maintaining this compatibility. The Flex SDK itself is of course still being developed by the Apache Flex community.