Page 1 of 3 In the first part of the Eclipse series, we learned how to install Eclipse and wrote a "Hello World" application in Java. In the second part, we installed plugins for PHP, ColdFusion and ActionScript development. In this part, we will help you install FAME (Flashout/ASDT/MTASC/Eclipse) and explore its features.
NOTE: The instructions for setting up FAME in this tutorial pertain to Windows users. Mac users should also be able to install Eclipse with the ASDT plugin, but this hasn't been tested for this article.
FAME is an acronym for Flashout/ASDT/MTASC/Eclipse. It includes the following components:
You can learn more about FAME — and other open-source environments such as AMES — on OSFlash.org.
In this section, we'll review how to obtain and install Java, Eclipse, MTASC, ASDT, and Flashout. (Some of this is also covered in Part 1 and Part 2 of this series.)
The first step is installing the Java 2 Platform Standard Edition (J2SE), if you haven't already.
NOTE: If you intend to compile Java classes, download the SDK. Otherwise, download the JRE. Make sure to download version 1.5 or higher.
After you download your selection, run the installer (e.g., jdk-1_5_0_06-windows-i586-p.exe or jre-1_5_0_06-windows-i586-p.exe). If you accept the default settings, the SDK or JRE is installed into the C:\Program Files\Java directory on Windows. If you want to be able to run Java applications from the command line, you should add JAVA_HOME to your computer's environment variables (this step isn't necessary for ActionScript development).
Eclipse and MTASC are easier to set up, since they don't use Windows installers. Instead, you simply download and extract the zip files.
To install Eclipse, download the latest version — 3.1.2 at the time of this writing — and extract the zip to a folder on your computer (e.g., C:\Program Files\Eclipse). Next, create a shortcut to eclipse.exe and save it to your desktop or Quick Launch toolbar. When you install new plugins manually, such as Flashout, add the -clean argument to this shortcut. You can do this by right-clicking the shortcut and choosing Properties. Append -clean to the path in the Target text box:
"C:\Program Files\Eclipse\eclipse.exe" -clean
This forces Eclipse to reload its plugins.
To install MTASC, download the latest version and extract the zip to a folder on your computer (e.g., C:\Program Files\MTASC). Wherever you decide to extract the zip, remember the location so that you can add it to the preferences of ASDT and Flashout.
As with J2SE, you can create an environment variable if you want to use MTASC from the command line without having to type the entire path. This is not a requirement for ActionScript development, but could prove useful if you decide to run MTASC from other applications.
Complete the following steps to install the ASDT plugin:
Eclipse automatically installs the ASDT plugin using your Internet connection. When installation is complete, restart the Eclipse workspace when prompted.
Unlike most Eclipse plugins, Flashout must be manually copied into the Eclipse plugins directory (e.g., C:\Program Files\Eclipse\plugins).
NOTE: You must replace all occurrences of TRACE in Flashout.as with trace due to a change in the latest version of MTASC. Otherwise, you will receive the following error when you try to compile with MTASC: "type error Unknown class TRACE". (The revised version of Flashout.as is included with the article support files.)
In the next section, we'll create two sample "Hello World" applications.
Keywords
FAME, Flashout, ActionScript Development Tool, ASDT, MTASC, Motion-Twin ActionScript Compiler, Eclipse
