[worldKit-dev] AS3 / Flex Version?

[Ian Mayo]

Afternoon Mikel,
> Hi
> I have two concerns. First, the penetration of FP 9 (required to run AS 3.0) is
> slightly lower (10-15%) than FP 8. I suppose this isn't such a big deal, since
> upgrading is so easy .. but I'd want the worldKit download to be packaged with
> SWFObject (http://osflash.org/flashobject) so that requiring FP 9 is easier/cleaner.

This makes sense (though I've very little familiarity with the Flash world).

> More of a concern is the lack of an AS 3.0 open source compiler. It's been a
> long time intention to remove any dependencies on the commercial Flash IDE,
> and provide tools to do a pure OS compile of Flash -- not out of idealism, but
> simply to make development of worldKit more accessible/free and because
> the open source tools are more developer oriented. More "developer oriented"
> also means harder to get started, and I haven't yet worked out that entire
> pathway (you can see the progress so far in trac). MTASC, the
> top OS flash compiler, will not do AS 3.

I've currently got a work item advertised on Rentacoder to produce a
more in-depth/complete tutorial. If/when it's complete I'll add it to
trac.

I share your enthusiasm to see an open source development environment,
and presume that the availability of Eclipse IDE will lower the
barrier for such an application/suite being created.

> On the plus side, AS3 and FP9 have significantly better performance, some
> neat new features, a stronger language and do give access to all the Flex
> developers. I honestly haven't been watching too closely the development of
> Flex, so can't say have much of a benefit to worldKit that could be -- would
> be nice to know if there's demand and what specific benefits Ian and Bill
> see from Flex. There's no dependence on anything 3rd party (zoomify
> dependency was removed).

As an old-skool developer, I look forward to
developing/extending/integrating worldKit in a more traditional
language/environment.  The Flash ide/environment is just too much of a
learning hurdle for me (I've already got 1 1/2 day-jobs...).

> We should also consider that there's a large number of bugs and
> features, and how should AS 3 balance against those?

If AS3/flex both makes maintenance easier and increases the pool of
development resources it would appear bug-fixing could move forward
more quickly.

> I see our options as sticking with AS 2.0, going completely to 3.0,
> or third option (maybe more painful?) to maintain two branches of
> worldKit for 2.0 and 3.0.

Hmm.  At the end of the day, worldKit doesn't have "all that much"
code, and it is safely in SVN.  If a 3.0 port was underway it wouldn't
be too difficult to forward-propagate 2.0 fixes into the 3.0 code
stream - assuming the code hierarchy/structure remained relatively
similar.  This could allow a period of parrallel running - though I
share your reluctance about the long-term maintenance of two source
sets.

> Mikel

Does anybody have a feel for how many man-days of effort porting to
Flex/3.0 would require?

cheers,
Ian.