Specifications

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Chapter 6: Building Overview
Typical Adobe® Flex™ development environment include similar tools and asset types that you work with to create
Flex applications.
Topics
About the Flex development tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
About application files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .113
About the Flex development tools
Configuration files
Be familiar with the ways to configure your development environment. Adobe Flex Software Development Kit
(SDK) primarily provide XML files that you use to configure the settings. The flex-config.xml file defines the
default compiler options for the compilers.
In addition to server and compiler configuration settings, you can also modify the messaging and data
management settings, the JVM heap size, Adobe® Flash® Player settings, and logging and caching settings.
For more information about configuring your Flex SDK environment, see “Flex SDK Configuration” on page 119.
Compilers
Flex includes application compilers and component compilers. You use the application compilers to compile SWF
files from MXML and other source files. You use the component compilers to compile SWC files from component
files. You can then use SWC files as dynamic or static libraries with your Flex applications.
The application compilers take the following forms:
• Adobe® Flex™ Builder™ project compiler. The Flex Builder application compiler is opened by Flex Builder for
Flex Projects and ActionScript Projects.
• mxmlc command-line compiler. You open the mxlmc compiler from the command line to create a SWF file
that you then deploy to a website.