Test Drive: ASDT .8 Preview Release

I finally got around to setting up my Eclipse environmet using the new ASDT .8 plugin auto-update feature. There are a few gotchas which I stumbled upon along the way, so I decided to create a captivate tutorial covering installation, configuration and use in addition to the outline that follows:

ASDT .8 auto update, configuration and use tutorial.

1. Make sure you remove the old ASDT plugin from the Eclipse plugins directory prior to installing the update. Things definately don’t work right if you don’t take this step.
2. I’m probably a bit paranoid, but after uninstalling the old ASDT 7.1 plugin I closed eclipse and launched it again from the command line with the -clean parameter. I also did the same thing after successfully installing the plugin…I’m not certain it “cleans” anything, but it can’t hurt.
3. After running the plugin update and installing, you’ll notice a few new things:
   • There is now a full blown ActionScript perspective.
   • The configuration of the editor is slightly different.
   • There is no longer an MTASC view available.
   • There is a new AS Logger view.
4. I was a bit perplexed by the lack of an MTASC view, but after a few minutes of reflection I guessed that ultimately the ASDT boys are looking to parallel their plugin to what is available for Java. The Java editor spits out error messages to the standard Eclipse Console view and, sure enough, all I had to do in order to get my MTASC compiler messages back was open up the Eclipse Console view (make sure you have the ASDT editor configured to use MTASC as its compiler and that you have selected the “Check Syntax on Save” and “Check syntax when an AS file is opened” check boxes).
5. I’m not certain, to date, how the ASLogger functions. There seems to be no way to configure it at this point and our comrades in arms on the OSFlash mailing list are all asking the same question. Hopefully, when the .8 release is “official” we’ll hear a bit more about this.

Overall, things look to be shaping up nicely with ASDT. There are still bugs and many features I’d like to see implemented, but the open-source team is doing admirable work and certainly have my heartfelt appreciation–Nice work guys.