Whilst the recent release of Flash Builder 4 was accompanied by a corresponding release of the Flex 4 SDK, it’s important to note that you don’t need to update or migrate your applications to the Flex 4 SDK or wait until you start a new project to take advantage of the features in Flash Builder 4. You can continue to work on Flex 3 projects using the Flex 3 SDK within Adobe Flash Builder 4.
By working on your existing Flex 3 projects in Flash Builder 4, you benefit from the vast majority of the new features added in this release of the tool, including the new network monitor, enhanced debugging, new refactoring support, code editing improvements, unit testing support and the data centric development (DCD) workflow. (Note: DCD requires Flex SDK 3.4 or later.) In total, there are more than 50 features that will make you more productive when building Flex applications.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to getting Flex Builder 3 projects into Flash Builder 4 ― download the Flash Builder 4 trial (you can install it alongside Flex Builder 3) and follow the steps below:
- In Flex Builder 3, go to File > Export > Flex Project Archive… to save out a zipped version of your project.
- In Flash Builder 4, go to File > Import > Flash Builder Project…
- After importing the project you will see a dialog box asking you to choose the Flex SDK version of the project. Flash Builder 4 comes pre-installed with the latest version of the Flex 3 SDK, version 3.5.
If your project is already based on Flex SDK 3.5 or you would like to move it to the latest release, then select Flex 3.5 from the “Use a specific SDK” drop-down list and skip to Step 5.
If you were using Flex SDK 3.4 or earlier, then you will need to download the required SDK and configure Flash Builder 4 to use it ―this is straightforward and only needs to be done once.
From the Adobe Open Source website, select a Milestone Release Build for Flex SDK 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3 or 3.4, depending upon the SDK you are using with your project (you can check this in Flex Builder 3 by looking at the ‘Flex Compiler’ properties for the project). Alternatively select a stable or nightly build if you know that is what you need.
Unzip the downloaded SDK into the SDKs folder in the Flash Builder 4 application folder ― on Mac OS X this will likely be /Applications/Adobe Flash Builder 4/sdks/ and on Windows /Program Files/Adobe/Adobe Flash Builder 4/sdks.
4. Click the “Configure Flex SDKs…” link, the Choose Flex SDK Version dialog box, and then the “Add…” button. Select the SDK folder you just unzipped and Flash Builder should recognize it and add it to the list of intalled Flex SDKs.
Make sure to then select the newly installed SDK as the version in the “Use a specific SDK” drop-down list.
5. In the “Project will be upgraded” dialog box, select OK to make the project compatible with Flash Builder 4 (note that this will mean the project can no longer be opened in Flex Builder 3, but all your MXML and ActionScript files are still accessible via the file system should you want to merge any changes back into your project in Flex Builder 3)
6. After completing the import process you may see an error reported in the Problems view that relates to the creation of the HTML Wrapper. To resolve this issue, simply right click on the message and select “Recreate HTML Templates”
You are now ready to continue working on your Flex 3 project in Flash Builder 4!