mb0
Need Xtext 1.0.1 for Galileo (Debian)
Hi, I'm on a Debian box here and DESPERATELY trying to get axdt to work. For a starter. Debian ships Eclipse 3.5.2 (Galileo) and there's a huge gap after which follows 3.7.2, which on its part is not supported by axdt.
Now I had to find out that xtext 1.0.1 is NEAR unavailable now. I suppose it's simply no longer impossible to download it with the download manager. For example, I tried the common location http://download.itemis.com/updates which only has 1.0.2 Helios. I thought just ignore the "Helios" and go on, but axdt will merely install but the "Axdt" perspective does not appear.
I also figured out "my" xtext version I need is also here http://archive.eclipse.org/modeling/tmf/xtext/downloads/drops/1.0.1/R201008251220/
but it always says "No repository found". I'm getting real desperate, for I've been trying to get this to work since yesterday afternoon to no avail. Please give me a hand, anyone.
this project is dead. i was not even sure there were still users... but on popular demand i used my whole friday night to fix and update the axdt build and throw it into jenkins. this should work with eclipse indigo and xtext 2.2.1.
go to http://jenkins.mbnull.org/ download the latest update zip for axdt and axdt-sdk, install with eclipse and report back if everything works for you.
I second that! Thank you VERY MUCH! I would not have thought that in my wildest dreams (and actually, I could have lived with 3.5.2 as well if only I had been able to get it to work)
So I had better archive the Jenkins stuff in time, because one day it might be gone and I'll be glad to have that backed up on my CD ;). Thanks again.
Hmm, seems I have to ask one last stupid question ;)
Are these incremental updates, that is, do we need the "regular" axdt package additionally to your new ones?
mb0: I believe there are still users of adxt because it's one of a small handful of cross-platform IDEs for AS3 compilation. Flash Builder only runs on Windows/OSX (and is built on the Eclipse core anyway) and dealing with mxmlc at a shell script level is tedious.
no, this is a whole new version. i think there are even some new features like regex literals. the only things that were still an issue for me were xml lilterals and package qualified names.
i am sorry that development of axdt is/was so irregular. but i am all alone and i do not work with as3 as often. and even when i did add or fix something: the release and especially the uploading took way too long. now there is a jenkins and a fixed tycho build. so if anyone has any new patches or wants to update the bundled flexsdk or whatever, have a stab at it. it should be easier than ever to build axdt locally just git clone both repos, install and run maven 3 in both roots.
the source will stay here and the jenkins is also meant to be permanent.
tyrannosaur: there IS a Flash Builder port called 'fb4linux' by a Chinese developer, but it's made for 64bit and prone to have issues with 32bit machines as mine. But maybe mentioning it will help some other folks here. Besides, I'm only mentioning that because mb0 considers this project "dead". (in any case, if I may say so, a HORRIFIC word considering how much hard work he put into here)
mb0: thanks, nice to know!
Well, the biggest issue was that your "classic" axdt was built with early xtext (I presume 1.0.0 or 1.0.1) and that especially this build has obviously been removed worldwide from the update servers. Now, being compatible to the 2.X or even 2.2.X branch, this will put things in a much brighter (read: much more pleasant) light; and, of course, motivate a lot more users to maintain the software.
tyrannosaur, that is why i built axdt. however if there are more than a handful of users they must be very silent. i was even surprised about you guys. i think i had contact with about 30 maybe 40 users and received 250 € and one code contribution over the years. i was very happy about that but it is very little motivation in comparison to the effort and time i put into it.
mb0: I tend to compare it to folks at the dentist's :) They will usually only come over there when they have an aching tooth :) So it's comparable to users of your software, who usually only speak up if there's an issue they can't solve on their own :) Also, please consider that if people do not know about axdt and that a project like this exists, they can't know about you and your work either. What you might need is to team up with a marketing guru able to promote your work like hell so that it gets known in the world ;)
well the xtext version issue was fixed by removing 3 line fragments of a feature.xml. i cannot remember any bug report or patch. so i certainly wouldn't expect that this motivates more users to contribute... not that i wouldn't be happy about it.
mb0: well, if you know WHERE to "fix" something, it's surely a waltz :) But this is such a plethora of small-size files to deal with, so unless one really knows what he's doing, he had better not mess with these. (Telling from personal experience and adjoining hours of bug-hunting)
i know marketing is no serious suggestion. but i certainly reasoned about it. and i came to the conclusion that the market is saturated and that i only ever had the chance to reach a small niche of opensource idealist or linux users. usually this target audience blogs or tweets about things they like. marketing in opensource projects without commercial plan or backing is usually done by the community. silent users are not a community. so the only motivation for me to advertise axdt is more work and potentially even more work and all for nothing in return.
andreas-e my point exactly. i dont know either and since i dont use axdt why should i do the hours of bug-hunting, sadly axdt is so dependent on me that this pretty much means its death.
:-( Sad to hear that... Anyways, back for some reports... (I'm still on 3.5.2 for now, I only upgrade to Indigo if I really have to because it's such a lot of extra fuss)
- Finally I could get Xtext 2.2.1 work here - after satisfying external dependencies as follows: (listed here because I could maybe help some others with that) -- GEF-draw2d (v3.5.0 (20090422-2346...)) -- EMF (v2.5.0)
Xtext then installed fine and I had a good basis for installing new Axdt. So far so good. Installed Axdt SDK, then the small update pack. Still, so far so good. (NOTE I left out Mxml because I was simply sick of satisfying any more dependencies (wst-something); plus I think mxml is a gimmick I probably won't need for my work)
Unfortunately, then the same problem occurred again: even though the whole installation run flawlessly, under "Window" there was no "Axdt" perspective showing up. I wish I could peek into what Eclipse might complains about but even in debug mode you don't get shown anything about what's wrong.
Seems I'm forced to go up to 3.7.X.
i have used it with http://xtext.itemis.com/xtext/language=en/36553/downloads i think it should still work with eclipse 3.5. but testing it with a clean installation is probably a wast of time. eclipse has an error log view where it should report problems.
A waste of time because chances are it won't work with a clean inst. either? ;) That's what I'm beginning to think so just to get things finally going, I'll try with 3.7.1 (Xtext bundle) now. Thanks for bearing with me, and I'll keep you posted.
hmm i just tried installing and the sdk feature was missing plugins. jenkins is rebuilding right now.
YES!! They actually do. Even the initial sdk you uploaded for me works perfectly on 3.7.1. First time I can see the Axdt perspective!! The missing-plugins issue appears to be related to eclipse << 3.7 because at least the bundled version from itemis needs nothing additional to that.
Thanks again for all your work, finally the actual thing can start. However, I can't deny for corporate environments it would not be too wrong to be 3.5-compatible also because the IT staff might not have given green lights for >> 3.5 due to possible issues with in-house applications.
WHOOPS! Seems I was too early in my jumps for joy... Got null pointer exception while compiling SWF...
28553 [Worker-5] ERROR org.axdt.as3.debug.launch.jobs.CompileJob - Error launching task Compile Swf java.lang.NullPointerException at org.axdt.common.IAxdtExtension$Helper.executeContribution(IAxdtExtension.java:51) at org.axdt.compiler.AbstractDelegatingAxdtCompiler.getCompiler(AbstractDelegatingAxdtCompiler.java:78) at org.axdt.compiler.AbstractDelegatingAxdtCompiler.compile(AbstractDelegatingAxdtCompiler.java:65) at org.axdt.as3.debug.launch.jobs.CompileJob.doRun(CompileJob.java:32) at org.axdt.launch.AbstractLaunchJob.run(AbstractLaunchJob.java:35) at org.eclipse.core.internal.jobs.Worker.run(Worker.java:54) 74917 [Worker-10] ERROR org.axdt.as3.debug.launch.jobs.CompileJob - Error launching task Compile Swf java.lang.NullPointerException at org.axdt.common.IAxdtExtension$Helper.executeContribution(IAxdtExtension.java:51) at org.axdt.compiler.AbstractDelegatingAxdtCompiler.getCompiler(AbstractDelegatingAxdtCompiler.java:78) at org.axdt.compiler.AbstractDelegatingAxdtCompiler.compile(AbstractDelegatingAxdtCompiler.java:65) at org.axdt.as3.debug.launch.jobs.CompileJob.doRun(CompileJob.java:32) at org.axdt.launch.AbstractLaunchJob.run(AbstractLaunchJob.java:35) at org.eclipse.core.internal.jobs.Worker.run(Worker.java:54)
But maybe the new package cures it? (Note I just used the very handy (!!thanks!!) Hello World example to test if everything works as it should)
it should. the plugin linking the compiler to axdt was missing from the feature.
xtext 2 should work with eclipse 3.5 but i couldn't install it in an old installation i found. i think if you get xtext 2.0.1 installed in 3.5 then axdt will install work.
Very probably. 2.1.1/2.2.1 appear definitely too new for this build. And now you know why I tried 1.0.1 with your initial build I had used when I opened this ticket :) BUT: Let me repeat Xtext 2.2.1 had installed perfectly on 3.5, the only problem was that the 2.2.1-equipped Eclipse did not visually run axdt at all ;) (visually = perspective must show up, disregarding whether compiler works or not, as that would be a 2nd step)
Anyways, now let's get THIS one to compile a primitive SWF first.
Replaced both old packages with the new ones, but still NullPointerException. (BTW the small package is still 3 202 366 bytes in size, so either no changes or erroneously uploaded the same version as before)
I'll try to start over with vanilla .eclipse user dir... (could be that Eclipse still has issues with squeaky-clean uninstallation of old packages)
SUCCESS!
Phooohh...now that was a long shot. Due to an early dependency of Flex4<->org.axdt.as3.debug I found out you must install the small package first, then the SDK. It only works this direction.
SWF compiled fine now. Thanks for the hours of extra free support, and I think there were a couple of users reading all these posts. They just waited until everything works, like the proverbial birds that love to stretch out in the nest their parents have built up for them in countless hours.;)
I am one of the other few users of AXDT, it seems. (I was the one asking for Vector support and got it, thanks by the way.) Although I think there are a lot more users considering there are a few good/popular blog posts about AXDT and AXDT is pretty much the best actionscript IDE on Linux. I use it to create Flash games on Linux. It's a pretty large codebase and AXDT is able to keep up with it. However, I once had to change the memory settings since the stack limit (or something similar) was reached.
I would love to have swc library support (I mean that if you use library classes it doesn't give an error) and refactoring (just renaming variabled/functions/classes). But even without those it is still a pretty good editor - and to be honest I just discovered (after using axdt daily for a very long time now) the code completion feature that adds an import if you use it for a class name which is a time saver.
I regularly checked the axdt.org website and once it was closed I was quite disappointed. Hence I'm very glad for the new version now. Really thanks, mb0!
I installed the latest Eclipse 3.7.2 (clean installation) and then tried to install it with the 2 zip files you provided. It asked for some Guava bundle of Google. After some Googling I found the solution that you had to install XText (which after all is obvious as the project depens on it). After installing XText, I was able to install AXDT. It seems to work fine with my projects (the first few minutes at least). I do not use the compile features though as I use an ANT script to compile.
About helping out. I would actually be willing to spend a few hours here and then on AXDT fixing bugs and maybe adding some small features. However last time I tried (vector support), I got lost/overwhelmed in/with all the code and unfortunately gave up. Luckily mb0 fixed it then.
i am very happy axdt works for you haplosgames.
the swc thing is not easy to do, that is why i spent so much time to write an asdoc (and docx) parser that reads html page and makes them available in an xtext compatible meta model.
i know axdt is not particularly easy to contribute to, and i am partly responsible for that. there is simple too much architecture that is not useful in itself. but if you work with java and eclipse long enough, you start to follow that style without thinking. but you actually could help out by forking the axdt repository and adding a README.md with the installation steps and sending me a pull request. but only when you happen to have the time and motivation.
I realise I'm pinging a 5 month old ticket but I'd like to point out that I use AXDT extensively both at work and at home and I'd be very sad to see it slip away as so many projects do. I'm also in the position that I can no longer install AXDT, which is a pain as I just reinstalled my laptop and I miss being able to do flash dev on it.
I'm having difficulty getting the current contents of git to compile - This may be because of bugs or things not yet patched xtext 1.0/2.2 guava/google.collect but it's much more likely to be my inexperience with java, maven and eclipse plugins (I'm more a python, javascript and ActionScript person). I know ant quite well but that doesn't seem to be of any help with this project.
Do you have any instructions on how to set up an environment that will allow AXDT to build. Also if I can get to grips with the code base can I help with anything to keep the project alive?
Haqa...
