SDK as an RPM?

[Left Right <ol...@gmail.com>]

Hi, just asking, has it been considered, and if it was, what were the
decisions? Is Flex going to be / will try to be distributed as an
installable Linux package?
For non-Linux people: Linux applications (and not only applications,
basically, every thing that can be found on your system) can be "installed"
using some kind of package management program. Common examples are dpkg,
deb, aptitude, apt-get, synaptic etc. The software that can be installed in
this way needs to provide package description, this would usually include
listing the dependencies, so that installer tools would know what other
packages are needed for the software to function properly. So, for example,
Flex SDK could be distributed as 2 packages: flex-sdk and flex-sdk-dev
(flex-sdk-sources), first having least dependencies, second would require
building tools such some Java and Ant and whatever else is needed during
the SDK compilation. A good thing that an installer may do would be also to
put Flex executable binaries into user space (for example, make sure that
mxmlc is linked to /usr/bin/ or wherever the users saves their software).

I don't think there may be any problems with Flex being hosted by Apache in
this regard because most if not all of the Apache projects are installable
in this way.

Best.

Oleg

Re: SDK as an RPM?

[Carol Frampton <cf...@adobe.com>]

On 3/21/12 6 :49PM, "olegsivokon@gmail.com" <ol...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>By the way, there are SDK variants available for download today from
>Adobe:
>Adobe SDK, Open Source SDK. Is it possible that the content of OSS SDK can
>be made into a standalone package? I imagine that the differences don't
>end
>in SWCs, there may be some Java libraries used, which we may not be
>allowed
>to pack with the rest - well, I don't know, are there any?

There should be an add on package there as well.  The Adobe SDK = the open
source (aka MPL mozilla public license) SDK + the add-on package which has
Adobe proprietary stuff like fonts handling in it.

Carol
>

Re: SDK as an RPM?

[Justin Mclean <ju...@classsoftware.com>]

Hi,

> It speaks about using Sun JDK, it's not the only JDK that exists, there's also Open
> JDK and IBM JDK.
May be someone who's tried. Only real way to be sure would be to try it out and see if it works and swc's are the same.

Thanks,
Justin

Re: SDK as an RPM?

[Left Right <ol...@gmail.com>]

>
> There's some minimum requirements mentioned in the README.txt of the
> framework directory they are probably good enough for now.
>

Yup, I was just trying to be peculiar about the requirements. It speaks
about using Sun JDK, it's not the only JDK that exists, there's also Open
JDK and IBM JDK. I'm asking this because the recommended one is the Open
JDK (this is what you'll get if trying to install javac for example), not
the Sun JDK. There are ways to specify dependencies as variants. If Open
JDK is a valid option, there's a much better chance someone already has it
installed. On the contrary, if Open JDK is known to cause problems, and
isn't meant to work with the SDK, then the package should deal with it and
specify the known conflict, so that whoever installs it, would be prompted
to decide to remove or backup the JDK they are using before installing.

But then possibly the legal issues must come first.

By the way, there are SDK variants available for download today from Adobe:
Adobe SDK, Open Source SDK. Is it possible that the content of OSS SDK can
be made into a standalone package? I imagine that the differences don't end
in SWCs, there may be some Java libraries used, which we may not be allowed
to pack with the rest - well, I don't know, are there any?

Best.

Oleg

Re: SDK as an RPM?

[Justin Mclean <ju...@classsoftware.com>]

Hi,

> Depends: - I'm not really sure of what are the actual requirements (I had
> problems using SDK before with openJDK, but I'm not sure - maybe it should
> work? Can I specify just any JRE as a dependency? What precise version? (I
> think it used to work with Java 1.5 before). Has anyone tried it with IBM
> JRE?

There's some minimum requirements mentioned in the README.txt of the framework directory they are probably good enough for now.

Thanks,
Justin

Re: SDK as an RPM?

[Left Right <ol...@gmail.com>]

Ah, and here's the control file: (this is the package description)

Package: apache-flex
Version: 4.6
Section: devel
Priority: optional
Architecture: any
Depends: sun-java6-jre
Suggests: flashplugin-nonfree, sun-java6-jdk
Installed-Size: 998755
Maintainer: Oleg Sivokon <ol...@gmail.com>
Description: The software development kit for Adobe Flash and Adobe AIR
runtimes.
 .
 This package contains utilities for compiling ActionScript 3 code,
 debugging Flash and AIR applications, documentation generation tools
 as well as a set of components for building applications that target
 Flash and AIR runtimes (aka Flex framework).

So, I have obvious questions:
Maintainer: - this is a mandatory field, but I'm not a maintainer of Flex
SDK :P at the very best I can be a maintainer of the deb package - so I'd
rather put something else into that field :)
Package: - well, I don't want to be a person that takes all responsibility
for giving names etc. So, suggestions welcome, also, it may make sense to
split the SDK into several packages.
Depends: - I'm not really sure of what are the actual requirements (I had
problems using SDK before with openJDK, but I'm not sure - maybe it should
work? Can I specify just any JRE as a dependency? What precise version? (I
think it used to work with Java 1.5 before). Has anyone tried it with IBM
JRE?

Finally, since my English is what it is... a nicer description would be
also cool :)

Best.

Oleg

Re: SDK as an RPM?

[Left Right <ol...@gmail.com>]

OK, I went forward, and I've couple of questions now:
- SDK command line utilities usually rely on $FLEX_HOME being set (or set
it themselves). I would imagine that the common use case is not to set
$FLEX_HOME and let the utilities figure it out on their own. They would
normally default to the parent directory of where they live, but this is
not optimal. The desired setup would be something like so:

/usr/bin/mxmlc (soft link to /etc/alternatives/mxmlc)
/etc/alternatives/mxmlc (soft link to
/usr/lib/apache-flex-sdk/mxmlc-${version})
/usr/lib/apache-flex-sdk/mxmlc-${version} is the actual shell script that
launches java -jar mxmlc -yada-yada

So, instead of modifying existing shell scripts, it's more feasible to set
$FLEX_HOME to the directory the dpkg will be installing the SDK. This is
not a problem, but what do you think would be the average use case: should
$FLEX_HOME go into /etc/profile or into $HOME/.profile ? I.e. what is most
likely to happen - SDK is installed for all users, or SDK is installed on
per user basis? (I do usually install it for all users, because it's a home
PC, obviously, but who knows...)

Best.

Oleg

Re: SDK as an RPM?

[Left Right <ol...@gmail.com>]

Well, making a deb or rpm package isn't much work, but hosting it requires
an online resource and such... I don't even really know what does it take
to get a package registered with established Linux distros, as I've never
done it before :) but I think I could make and test a deb package...

Best.

Oleg

Re: SDK as an RPM?

[Justin Mclean <ju...@classsoftware.com>]

Hi,

> Hi, just asking, has it been considered, and if it was, what were the
> decisions? Is Flex going to be / will try to be distributed as an
> installable Linux package?
It's not been discussed as far as I know. Also I don't think any decision needs to be made if someone want to go ahead and do it then go for it.

Thanks,
Justin

Re: SDK as an RPM?

[Alex Harui <ah...@adobe.com>]

On 3/21/12 10:10 AM, "olegsivokon@gmail.com" <ol...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Ouch... well, makes sense, but then how? Would I need to wget them from
> Apache repository? I've really no idea - so that's one reason I've asked...
> Or would I need to do something like Oracle does to Java install with
> prompts and confirmations etc?
I think we'll find a way, but it isn't worth speculating on at this time.
Wait until we actually have a release to package.  I don't know anything
about RPM or Maven, but for sure, folks want to make the release available
for Maven and I expect it will have the same desire to package some
non-Apache binaries.

-- 
Alex Harui
Flex SDK Team
Adobe Systems, Inc.
http://blogs.adobe.com/aharui

Re: SDK as an RPM?

[Left Right <ol...@gmail.com>]

Ouch... well, makes sense, but then how? Would I need to wget them from
Apache repository? I've really no idea - so that's one reason I've asked...
Or would I need to do something like Oracle does to Java install with
prompts and confirmations etc?

Best.

Oleg

Re: SDK as an RPM?

[Carol Frampton <cf...@adobe.com>]

Beware that you are not going to be able to produce a standalone binary
package because we can not distribute binaries/swcs for any code that we
don't have the sources for or have the right to distribute and I'm not
even sure about this last part.  Off the top of my head this includes the
playerglobal.swc, the AIR Stuff, textLayout.swc and osmf.swc.

Carol

On 3/21/12 4 :21AM, "olegsivokon@gmail.com" <ol...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Hi, just asking, has it been considered, and if it was, what were the
>decisions? Is Flex going to be / will try to be distributed as an
>installable Linux package?
>For non-Linux people: Linux applications (and not only applications,
>basically, every thing that can be found on your system) can be
>"installed"
>using some kind of package management program. Common examples are dpkg,
>deb, aptitude, apt-get, synaptic etc. The software that can be installed
>in
>this way needs to provide package description, this would usually include
>listing the dependencies, so that installer tools would know what other
>packages are needed for the software to function properly. So, for
>example,
>Flex SDK could be distributed as 2 packages: flex-sdk and flex-sdk-dev
>(flex-sdk-sources), first having least dependencies, second would require
>building tools such some Java and Ant and whatever else is needed during
>the SDK compilation. A good thing that an installer may do would be also
>to
>put Flex executable binaries into user space (for example, make sure that
>mxmlc is linked to /usr/bin/ or wherever the users saves their software).
>
>I don't think there may be any problems with Flex being hosted by Apache
>in
>this regard because most if not all of the Apache projects are installable
>in this way.
>his
>Best.
>
>Oleg