Datasheet

The Flex Software Developers Kit (SDK)
The Flex class library and command-line tools you need to build Flex applications are completely
free. As long as you don’t need to use Flex Builder or certain components that require a license,
you can download the Flex SDK from Adobe and build and deploy as many applications as you
want. The obvious benefit is the cost. The drawback to this approach is that you’ll have to select a
text editor such Eclipse that doesn’t have the specific support for Flex application development
that you get with Flex Builder.
If you decide to use the Flex 3 SDK, download the most recent version from Adobe at
www.adobe.
com/go/flex
. The SDK is delivered in a zipped archive file that can be extracted to any platform.
The SDK includes most of the class library you use to build Flex applications. The following com-
ponents, however, require a license for deployment:

Flex Charting components

AdvancedDataGrid component

Application profiling tools
As shown in Figure 1.11, if you decide to use these features without a license, any instances of the
charting components or AdvancedDataGrid component are displayed in your application with
a watermark indicating that you are using an evaluation version of the component.
In addition to the Flex class library, the Flex 3 SDK includes these command-line tools:

mxmlc: A compiler for building Flex applications

compc: A compiler for building component libraries, Runtime Shared Libraries (RSLs),
and theme files

fdb: A debugger to debug applications

fcsh: The Flex Compiler Shell, which you can use to execute multiple compilation tasks
without the overhead of having to launch a new Java Virtual Machine (JVM) for each task

amxmlc: The AIR application compiler

acompc: The AIR component compiler

adl: The AIR debug application launcher

optimizer: A tool for reducing ActionScript compiled file size and creating a “release
version” of an application, component, or RSL
Detailed information about how to use each of these command-line tools is available in the Adobe
publication Building and Deploying Flex Applications.
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Flex Fundamentals
Part I
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