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Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Finally some tools to go from FlashBuilder to InteliJ IDEA

For quite a while now I've wanted to get into IntelliJ IDEA IDE.  There are a couple of reasons for this.

  1. I find Eclipse to be a bit annoying every now and then.
  2. It seemed to me that IntelliJ IDEA really is an amazing IDE and everyone tells me so. (Even though I think it has a nasty Java UI)
I have tried downloading the IDE twice and both times had a hard time with it.  I felt that Eclipse was one culture I've gotten used to since 1999, and IntelliJ was just a whole new way of thinking that would require a tutor for me to understand.  To be honest, I've been very embarrassed about this last bit and I never quite knew how to ask anyone to help me, or even who to ask.


Well the other day something interest happened.  A few days ago IntelliJ posted some stats about the increase in ActionScript projects. This led to a discussion in the Apache dev list about the IDE.  After some back and forth someone named Jagan Langa Sami Dura wrote to the Apache Flex dev mailing list and fighting  through what I imagine was some embarrassment, wrote a very poignant email.

I thought to try the IDEA for my flex development, after seeing a lot of discussions in this group and in linkedlin about the comparison between IDEA and FB. I'm using FB for past 5 years (From FB3 to FB4.7). I really don't know where to start in IDEA. I downloaded the community version and installed it. after that I don't see any options to create a flex project. or options to add a plugin to support flex project. My Doubts are, 1. Can I create flex project in community version..? 2. Is there a trial version available for flex development ? 3. When compared to the cost of the FB4.7 and IDEA seems equal. How do you guys(IDEA team) believe that you can attract the developers and most importantly the Management peoples or the clients who is familiar (almost addicted) with FB? 4. I don't see any dedicated page/product for "IDEA for Flex" in the IDEA product page, do i really missed that page in their products page..?
To my surprise and I think to the surprise of others, an employee of JetBrains, Alexander Dorshanko, responded and his emails said the following:
Hi, - ActionScript/Flex support is included in IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate Edition only [1] - 30-day free fully functional trial period [2]. Afterwards you can ask sales@jetbrains.com to extend trial period. - members of open source projects (e.g. Apache Flex committers) can apply for a free license [3] - IntelliJ IDEA personal license costs $199 whereas Flash Builder is $699 Some documentation resources: - Feature overview [4] - Embedded help: Language and Framework-Specific Guidelines | ActionScript and Flex, also available online [5] - More than 50 short video screencasts by John Lindquist at JetBrains TV [6] (start from 'IntelliJ IDEA 11.1 Flex Features') - Two articles at JetBrains wiki: quick start with AIR app for Android [7], Flexmojos-driven workflow [8] - A lot of 3rd party blog posts and tutorials in the Internet You can try to start even without looking at docs: either Import Project | <select Flash Builder workspace> or New Project | Flash Module. Feedback and any questions are welcome at the forum [9], bugs and feature requests - in the issue tracker [10]. Or just email me directly. -- Alexander Doroshko IntelliJ IDEA Flash Team Lead http://www.jetbrains.com "Develop with pleasure!" [1] http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/features/editions_comparison_matrix.html [2] http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/download/index.html [3] http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/buy/index.jsp [4] http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/features/flex_ide.html [5] http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/webhelp/actionscript-flex-and-air.html [6] http://tv.jetbrains.net/tags/john-lindquist [7] http://wiki.jetbrains.net/intellij/Developing,_running_and_packaging_AIR_mobile_applications_for_Android
[8] http://wiki.jetbrains.net/intellij/Working_with_Flexmojos_projects_in_IntelliJ_IDEA
[9] http://devnet.jetbrains.net/community/idea/ideacommunity[10] http://youtrack.jetbrains.net

Sorry, forgot one more important link. Developers familiar with Eclipse and Eclipse-based products should first of all take a look at the page 'IntelliJ IDEA vs Eclipse Terminology' [1] and keep a link to 'Basic Concepts' [2].
[1] http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/webhelp/intellij-idea-vs-eclipse-terminology.html
[2] http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/webhelp/basic-concepts.html
I hope this information is helpful to others, and in the next couple weeks, I'm going to try to follow these links and move away from a very horrible coding experience that is a bloated Eclipse and FlashBuilder.

3 comments:

  1. Once I moved from IntelliJ IDEA I never looked back, refactoring alone is a huge reason to stick with IDEA. I wrote a few articles over the past few years on my blog covering Flex, unit testing, git, etc if you're interested:

    https://www.google.com/search?q=intellij&q=site%3Anewtriks.com

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  2. Thanks for the link, I'll definitely read into that. I've been using source mate for a while in Flashbuilder for refactoring and other features, but I also wish unit tests ran faster.

    I'm really hoping this next week I can read through the links and download the free trial and speed up my development. :)

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  3. Finally made the switch, too many problems with FB 4.7 and no sourcemate support. It took a bit to setup my giant app with all it's sub projects (sorry modules in Idea speak) and dependencies. However once I understood that projects in FB are modules in intelliJ, and projects in IntelliJ are more like workspaces in FB. Other than that I was able to figure the rest out, and what the hell have I been doing in FB so long? IntelliJ is freaking awesome!

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