Since Adobe decided to ignore us Mac stiffs - not like I’ve ever done anything for ‘em, I’ve only been buying Photoshop since version 3 - I’ve made my own quasi Flex work-flow with “the missing editor for OS X” TextMate.

BTW Photoshop 3 introduced layers which was their greatest innovation until Flex 2.0 :P

Okay enough about my love/hate relationship with Adobe, here’s how I built the ‘Vixiom Flex Builder 3000′. First make sure you have Xcode installed (I can’t remember if this is 100% necessary before I was using TextMate I used Xcode to build from Josh Buhler’s instructions), if you use ruby Xcode is probably already installed, if not install it from the CD that came with your Mac. Put the Flex SDK in /Developer/SDKs/Flex.

TextMate is completely customizable through the bundle editor, you open it by going to Bundles>Bundle Editor>Show Bundles

To make a new bundle you click the + sign at the bottom left of the editor and select ‘New Bundle’ call it ‘Flex’.

With your Flex bundle selected click the + again and choose ‘New Command’ call it ‘Build Project’, I change the ‘Save:’ drop down to ‘Current File’ so it save your work when you build, also change Output to ‘Discard’ otherwise it will overwrite your file with output (what you would see in the terminal). At the bottom I made ‘Activation’ Apple-B (Command-B) which becomes the short cut to build the mxml file.

Now for some applescripting! I’m somewhat ashamed to say this is my first applescript, I’ve been told it can do all kinds of wonderful things but I’ve just never had the time to get into it before. In the ‘Command(s):’ section of the bundle editor enter the following script.

osascript <<EOF
    tell application “Terminal”
    activate
        do script “/Developer/SDKs/Flex/bin/mxmlc -output $TM_PROJECT_DIRECTORY/public/swf/$TM_FILENAME.swf -file-specs $TM_FILEPATH -services $TM_PROJECT_DIRECTORY/config/WEB-INF/flex/services-config.xml -context-root http://localhost:3000/weborb”
        delay 1
        repeat while the front window is busy
            delay 0.5
        end repeat
    end tell
    tell application “Firefox”
    activate
    end tell
EOF

It translates like this:

1. open the Terminal;
2. run script "/Developer/SDKs/Flex/bin/mxmlc -output $TM_PROJECT_DIRECTORY/public/swf/$TM_FILENAME.swf -file-specs $TM_FILEPATH -services $TM_PROJECT_DIRECTORY/config/WEB-INF/flex/services-config.xml -context-root http://localhost:3000/weborb" the last two options are um… optional, they’re used for comiling with WebORB for Rails which of course you’re using to load data into your flex app! There’s some Textmate dynamic variables in there $TM_PROJECT_DIRECTORY which is dynamic for your TextMate project’s directory, and $TM_FILENAME which is the name of your file because of this your output swf will be called ‘filename.mxml.swf’.
3. pause while mxml compiles (repeat while the front window is busy)
4. bring Firefox to the front, I had code in there before that opened a specific location in Firefox but it was a hassle to change, the first time I run it I browse to the URL I’m testing then refresh the page when Firefox pops to the front after a compile.

It’s still a bit rough around the edges, I want Firefox to auto-refresh when it pops to the front, also a new Terminal window is created every time I build. I had the window closing but then it closes even if you have an error and you miss the debug info.

One thing I’d love to know is if the compile times I’m getting with the command line compiler are normal, I’m averaging about 10-20 seconds per build which is alright unless you’re debugging then it’s an interminable amount of time. I have Flex Builder on my MacBook Pro with Parallels but haven’t set up Rails yet on there, plus all my files, and production apps are on the G5 so switching back and forth would be a headache (and who wants to work in Windows all day, ack!). However compile times with Flex Builder are almost instant, I think it’s because the command line has to load the config xml files each time while Flex Builder has them built in and cached.

If only I had Flex Builder for OS X *sigh*.