Adobe AIR Development

[dbigham]

I've always been a user of the command line tools for compiling... I use mxmlc.

Today I tried using a TextArea for the first time. (qnx.fuse.ui.text.TextArea)

It actually compiles ok, but when I run it, I get flash error #1014, which I believe means that the class is missing.

This would seem to imply that I need to alter my mxml comilation command to use qnx.fuse stuff, but I haven't read anything that tells people how to do this.

I wondered whether the documentation that tells people how to get up and running with the command line tools had been updated to cover these topics:

https://developer.blackberry.com/air/documentation/ww_air_testing/Testing_your_application_cmd_ms_19...

It would appear not. There isn't anything mentioned at all about how to use mxmlc, and the link that points to the "Flex SDK" is a web of misery in which I can't find anything.

This is a rather sad state of affairs... it seems like someone has dropped the ball here in terms of providing adequate documentation.

[jtegen]

Are you including the Skin ANE?

[dbigham]

No.  Is that also required for PlayBook AIR development?

[jtegen]

Not for PlayBook under the current version, just BB10 devices. If you run yours in debug, does it show where it is failing?

[dbigham]

This is where I'm going to sound silly: Back in the day I wasn't successful in figuring out how to run AIR apps in debug. I tried the instructions i found but they didn't work, so I've never learned how to do that properly. Are there instructions lying around for how to do that?

[jtegen]

I use FlashBuilder 4.6. All I have to do is set the local IP in the configuration for the debug host and launch the app via the debug tool and it all works perfectly. If you are doing this by the command line, I am less certain how that would work.

[UberschallSamsara]

I do all sim and device targeted builds w/cmdline tools and am able to connect to flash debugger (fdb) for debug sessions.  Hopefully I can post details later but for now:

1) Check the Adobe documentation for detailed mxmlc help; it's an Adobe tool.

2) Run mxmlc -help  compiler.library-path to see help on this cmdline option

3) Probably the mxmlc option you want is -compiler.library-path and set it to the path of the swc that contains the fuse components.  I think it's <path to SDK>\frameworks\libs\qnx\qnxui.swc but I'd have to pull it up in a swc inspector to confirm.

4) See the knowledgebase article on connecting to fbd, with the caveats that it's old, and the correct cmdline compile invocations to get a debuggable bar might have changed:  http://supportforums.blackberry.com/t5/Adobe-AIR-Development/Compile-and-Debug-without-Flash-Builder...

The blackberry-airpackager cmdline tool was known to be picky and to have changed at least once before

getting out of beta and the knowledgebase article is beta era.

[UberschallSamsara]

Adobe docs:  

Compilers:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/flex/using/WS2db454920e96a9e51e63e3d11c0bf69084-7ffd.html

Debugger:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/flex/using/WS2db454920e96a9e51e63e3d11c0bf69084-7ffb.html

[dbigham]

I gave the debugger instructions a try, both the RIM instructions and the instructions on Adobe's site, and neither worked.

When I compile my app with either:

-compiler.debug

or:

-debug=true

... and then run it in the simulator, it never creates a connection to the fdb debugger session I have running. It just says:

Waiting for Player to connect

... indefinitely.

Another piece of information that I should have mentioned previously is that if I do compile my app with:

mxmlc +configname=air -library-path+=. Keyboard.as -o Keyboard.swf -swf-version=10 -compiler.include-libraries -compiler.include-libraries "E:\Program Files\Research In Motion\blackberry-tablet-sdk-2.0.0\frameworks\libs\qnx\qnxtext.swc"

... then the behavior changes: The BlackBerry splash screen appears as if the apps is about to start, but it freezes there. The app never starts.

[UberschallSamsara]

The fdb session needs for the debuggable application to know the IP of the debug host.  This can be provided

either on a blackberry-airpackager command line or if you launch the app via the device or simulator

UI, a debug mode app should prompt you to enter the debug host IP.  Until fdb gets the connection

request from the debuggable app it will just sit there displaying that "Waiting for Player to connect".

This might be easier to chase down interactively in an IRC session.  I'm on freenode.net some evenings (IRC nick

is "UberschallSamsar" and I'm usually in #BlackBerryDev when I'm on).