Skip to content
fwienber edited this page Jun 29, 2012 · 5 revisions

Jangaroo IDE Support

You can develop Jangaroo applications with any ActionScript-capable IDE like FlashDevelop, Adobe Flash Builder, Eclipse/axdt, Powerflasher FDT, or IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate Edition and use the command line for building the application with Maven. However, you still have to set up the project by hand (source path, libraries, external commands, …) and in the worst case, when compiling, navigate to compiler errors manually.

To provide an optimal developer experience, we offer two better solutions. We provide a project template and set up tips for FlashDevelop, and a full-featured plugin for IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate.

FlashDevelop

FlashDevelop is an Open Source ActionScript/Flash IDE based on .NET, and as such only available for Windows.

You can find a FlashDevelop project template for Jangaroo development on github. It contains a detailed README to get you started.
Because you will most likely want to use the Flash API, this project already includes the JooFlash library, which is Jangaroo’s Flash re-implementation and part of the Jangaroo libraries, and source templates (HTML wrapper, Main class) for running a JooFlash application.

The project template provides the following features:

  • Project creation wizard
  • Invoke Maven build by one button click or one key press
  • Jump to compiler errors with a double click

There are plans to add even better Jangaroo support to FlashDevelop (comparable to the Jangaroo IDEA plugin described below), featuring incremental compilation and debugging.

IntelliJ IDEA

IntelliJ IDEA is an IDE by JetBrains that started as a Java IDE, but in the meantime supports many other languages.

Since the Jangaroo team has good experience with IntelliJ IDEA when working with Java, and with version 8, IDEA started to support ActionScript 3, it was quite straight-forward for us to build a Jangaroo plugin for IDEA.

The plugin is called “Jangaroo Language” and can be installed like any other plugin using the IDEA plugin manager. Note that you need IDEA Ultimate Edition, because the Community Edition does not include AS3 support.

Because of the plugin, IDEA is currently the recommended choice for professional Jangaroo development. You get the most feature-complete support:

  • perfect AS3 support, including code navigation, completion, UML diagrams and many refactorings
  • Jangaroo Maven project import
  • blazing fast, incremental compile
  • clear, navigable compiler errors
  • UI for compiler settings
  • perfect Maven integration for building and starting Jangaroo Web apps directly from the IDE

You can find all details in the dedicated Jangaroo IDEA Plugin wiki.

Eclipse

Eclipse is an Open Source framework / platform that is the basis for many Language IDEs. Although Eclipse itself is Open Source, extensions / plugins may be commercial.

There are three Eclipse-based solutions for developing with AS3:

Currently, some people have tried developing Jangaroo applications with Eclipse, but we have not yet derived a best practice. We encourage you to comment or blog about your experience! Or stay tuned for further information.

Clone this wiki locally