What is Flex written in and how would someone go about learning to contribute to Apache Flex?

Question

I am sorry about this slightly open ended questions but I am trying to understand if Flex is written with ActionScript 3 or is it written another programming language or a group of them? I also would like to get involved in Apache Flex and I am wondering would the best thing for me to do is learn more AS3 or how would someone start get involved in something like this. I have built a mobile and desktop application using Flex and Flash Builder. Or do you have to be a extremely advanced developer in order to do anything like this? Thank for your help in my quest for learning!

Answer 1

I am sorry about this slightly open ended questions but I trying to understand is flex written with actionScript 3 or is it written another programming laugh or a group of them?

There are a lot of aspects to "Flex".
The Flex Framework is an ActionScript 3 framework. Although, with the introduction of Flex 4 and the Spark architecture I believe some of the default custom skins are built in MXML. At compile time MXML is turned into ActionScript; but for some purposes writing things in MXML makes it "Easier".

Other tools in the Flex SDK, such as the compiler and ASDocs are not written in ActionScript. I believe they are written in Java.

I am also would like to get involved in Apache flex and i am wandering would the best thing for me to do is learn more as3 or how would someone start get involved in something like this.

Their are lots of areas you can use to involve yourself in Apache Flex. I suggest you start at the Apache Flex web site. Sign up for the dev mailing list. To submit changes to the SDK, you can submit them via the Apache Flex JIRA. If you submit enough patches, fixes, or changes, then the PPMC (AKA Initial committers) will notice and perhaps will nominate you to become a committer yourself.

The question is, what do you want to do? What interests you? People of all skills are welcome. If you are just learning Flex and/or ActionScript

do you have to be a extremely advanced developer in order to do anything like this?

You do not have to be an advanced developer to participate. In this case action will speak more than skill.

Answer 2

Overall yes the Flex SDK is written in AS3 and is simply a lot of AS3 classes built to work together. I'm not sure what it takes to become a contributor on an Apache project but that would be the thing to look for in terms of getting involved in getting your code pulled into the mainline Flex SDK. As is there's still some delay in the Adobe legal team approving the release of some of the code, then there is an incubation period at Apache during which the road-map put forth by Adobe before the transfer will probably be re-worked some and the contributors at Apache will review the incoming code before development begins there. Here's some resources to become more familiar with the process that's going on right now and to learn more about what you'll need to know to be a more active participant:

http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/site/Home

http://incubator.apache.org/flex/

http://incubator.apache.org/projects/flex.html

Existing code transferred to apache: http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/flex/trunk/frameworks/README.txt

Code from the already released open source SDK on Adobe's site: http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Get+Source+Code

The easiest way to get your feet wet at this point is probably to get the source code and build scripts all from Adobe's site since it's going to be a coherent package at this point this way you'll have all the parts in one and won't have to worry yourself with mashing together multiple source trees to make it work. You should be able to compile all the swcs for the SDK and poke around to get familiar with the framework. If you're not already familiar with the way UIComponet works, or how to extend it to create custom controls it'd probably be good to at least get that under your belt before diving in to the rest of the framework so you have some concrete understanding of how the different managers will interact with UIComponents.

All the code is available aside from things defined in playerglobal.swc (such as the flash package). The playerglobal.swc from what I understand basically gives an interface to the method implemented by the Flash player itself, Tamarin the VM that runs the AS3 code is also open source but I'm not familiar with how much of the implementation in playerglobal.swc lives in Tamarin versus what's implemented in the Flash Player itself (which I believe is written in C). The details for all of this seem to be on the Open Source adobe Home page (the first link above).