New Actionscript compiler from Adobe

#1

Post by boofar » Wed, Aug 29, 2012, 12:42 AM UTC

New Actionscript compiler from Adobe
bytearray.org

Re: New Actionscript compiler from Adobe

#2

Post by reitzensteinm » Wed, Aug 29, 2012, 1:08 AM UTC

If anyone is still interested in doing Flash development with Flex, do yourself a favor and check out Haxe:

http://haxe.org/

The AS3 compiler in Flex is junk. My buglist over the three years I used it was nearly 100 items long. I don't know of a single unfixed issue in Haxe.

Plus, if you write the code properly, you can port it to nearly a dozen platforms (serverside, plus all of the ones on http://haxenme.org).

I don't make Flash games any more except for hobby projects, but migrating off of Flex was the best decision I ever made.

Re: New Actionscript compiler from Adobe

#3

Post by Scene_Cast2 » Wed, Aug 29, 2012, 1:09 AM UTC

Interesting. I should note that most of this stuff (optimization, etc) is available through Haxe. Haxe can also compile to Javascript, iOS & Android; targeting just Flash is risky at this point.

Re: New Actionscript compiler from Adobe

#4

Post by novalis » Wed, Aug 29, 2012, 2:06 AM UTC

Scene_Cast2 wrote: post #3

Interesting. I should note that most of this stuff (optimization, etc) is available through Haxe. Haxe can also compile to Javascript, iOS & Android; targeting just Flash is risky at this point.

Just to add to this. For mobile compilation targets, Android, Blackberry, iOS and webOS, support is added through the Haxe NME framework: (www.haxenme.org/). Haxe doesn't provide those compilation targets on its own.

Re: New Actionscript compiler from Adobe

#5

Post by vjeux » Wed, Aug 29, 2012, 2:34 AM UTC

Non-linear control flow added to AS3 through a new 'goto' keyword.

Re: New Actionscript compiler from Adobe

#6

Post by scotth » Wed, Aug 29, 2012, 2:40 AM UTC

> A function can be inlined when the following constraints are met:

> ...

> * The function does not contain any activations

Does this mean that a function can't be inlined if it calls other functions?

Re: New Actionscript compiler from Adobe

#7

Post by keyle » Wed, Aug 29, 2012, 2:44 AM UTC

It all sounded so AWESOME, up until...

Known issues: Flex compilation is not supported.

So much for multi-threaded compiling. Pfff. I guess we will just wait until the open-source people do it, sometimes next year?

Re: New Actionscript compiler from Adobe

#8

Post by merdreubu » Wed, Aug 29, 2012, 2:45 AM UTC

reitzensteinm wrote: post #2

If anyone is still interested in doing Flash development with Flex, do yourself a favor and check out Haxe: http://haxe.org/ The AS3 compiler in Flex is junk. My buglist over the three years I used it was nearly 100 items long. I don't know of a single unfixed issue in Haxe. Plus, if you write the code properly, you can port it to nearly a dozen platforms (serverside, plus all of the ones on http://haxenme.org ). I d…

This is actually an entirely new compiler written from scratch since 2010.

https://cwiki.apache.org/FLEX/falcon-overview.html

Re: New Actionscript compiler from Adobe

#9

Post by mrmiller » Wed, Aug 29, 2012, 3:00 AM UTC

reitzensteinm wrote: post #2

If anyone is still interested in doing Flash development with Flex, do yourself a favor and check out Haxe: http://haxe.org/ The AS3 compiler in Flex is junk. My buglist over the three years I used it was nearly 100 items long. I don't know of a single unfixed issue in Haxe. Plus, if you write the code properly, you can port it to nearly a dozen platforms (serverside, plus all of the ones on http://haxenme.org ). I d…

+1 for Haxe. One of the coolest projects happening right now, IMO. The community is awesome too. I'm just in love with it!

Re: New Actionscript compiler from Adobe

#10

Post by reitzensteinm » Wed, Aug 29, 2012, 3:01 AM UTC

merdreubu wrote: post #8

reitzensteinm wrote: post #2

If anyone is still interested in doing Flash development with Flex, do yourself a favor and check out Haxe: http://haxe.org/ The AS3 compiler in Flex is junk. My buglist over the three years I used it was nearly 100 items long. I don't know of a single unfixed issue in Haxe. Plus, if you write the code properly, you can port it to nearly a dozen platforms (serverside, plus all of the ones on http://haxenme.org ). I d…

This is actually an entirely new compiler written from scratch since 2010. https://cwiki.apache.org/FLEX/falcon-overview.html

The problem with Flex wasn't its design, it was how buggy all of the edge cases were. Sound files randomly being replaced, weird compile errors that go away once you reset, code generation errors fixed by adding comments, occasional minute long compilation times, out of memory errors (again, reset the computer).

Frankly, complete rewrites under these circumstances are a cop out. It's an easy but ineffective path. What they should be doing is unit tests, isolating bugs and strictly controlling quality. Common bug reports should be triaged, rather than ignored (it's not uncommon to have a bug, and find a set of posts years old discussing workarounds). All it would take to fix Flex would be the will to do it.

The rewrite will have a whole different bunch of issues, and be similarly problematic. It's not like Flex was a bad apple in a bunch of well engineered Adobe software.