Apache Royale™

The Apache Royale project is developing a next-generation of the Apache Flex™ SDK. Royale has the goal of allowing applications developed in MXML and ActionScript to not only run in the Flash/AIR runtimes, but also to run natively in the browser without Flash, on mobile devices as a PhoneGap/Cordova application, and in embedded JS environments such as Chromium Embedded Framework. Royale has the potential to allow your MXML and ActionScript code to run in even more places than Flash currently does.

For detailed information about using Royale, visit:

https://apache.github.io/royale-docs/

For more information about the Apache Royale project, visit:

https://royale.apache.org

Getting Royale

Getting the source code from GitHub is the recommended way to get Royale. You can check out the source via git using the following commands:

git clone https://github.com/apache/royale-asjs.git royale-asjs
cd royale-asjs
git checkout develop

You may also use a precompiled binary convenience package to develop Royale applications using your favorite IDE. In addition to that, Royale is available as Maven artifacts and through Node Package Manager (NPM).

Building Royale

Prerequisites

Before building Royale you must install the following software and set the corresponding environment variables using absolute file paths (relative paths will result in build errors). The set of prerequisites is different depending on whether you want to compile your projects to SWF or not. If you want SWF output, set up the environment variables per the instructions below, then skip to the next section (Additional Prerequisites For SWF Output)

Java

Royale requires Java JDK 11 or greater to be installed on your computer. For more information on installing the Java JDK, see:

https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html

• Environment variable

  Set the JAVA_HOME environment variable to the Java JDK installation path.

• PATH

  Add the bin directory of JAVA_HOME to the PATH.

  On Windows, set PATH to

  PATH=%PATH%;%JAVA_HOME%\bin

  On a Mac, set PATH to

  export PATH="$PATH:$JAVA_HOME/bin"

Ant

The Royale Ant build requires Ant 1.8 or greater to be installed on your computer.

For more information on installing Ant, see:

https://ant.apache.org/

• Environment variable

  Set the ANT_HOME environment variable to the Ant installation path.

• PATH

  Add the bin directory of ANT_HOME to the PATH.

  On Windows, set PATH to

  PATH=%PATH%;%ANT_HOME%\bin

  On a Mac, set PATH to

  export PATH="$PATH:$ANT_HOME/bin"

Additional Prerequisites For SWF Output

playerglobal.swc

The Adobe Flash Player playerglobal.swc (version 32.0) can be downloaded from:

https://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/updaters/32/playerglobal32_0.swc

First, create the following directory structure:

[root directory]/player/32.0/

Next, rename the downloaded SWC to 'playerglobal.swc' and place it in the above directory.

• Environment variable

  Set PLAYERGLOBAL_HOME environment variable to the absolute path of the player directory, not including the version subdirectory (i.e. '[root directory]/player').

Flash Player Content Debugger

The Adobe Flash Player Content Debugger can be found here:

Windows: https://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/updaters/32/flashplayer_32_sa_debug.exe

Mac: https://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/updaters/32/flashplayer_32_sa_debug.dmg

Linux: https://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/updaters/32/flash_player_sa_linux_debug.x86_64.tar.gz

This version of Royale was certified for use with Flash Player 32.0, and is compatible with version 10.2 and up. It has been compiled, but not fully tested, with other Flash Player versions. It has not been fully tested on Linux.

• Environment variable

  On Windows, set FLASHPLAYER_DEBUGGER to the absolute path including the filename of the Flash Player Projector Content Debugger executable (e.g. 'FlashPlayerDebugger.exe'). Note: the filename of Flash Player Content Debugger can differ slightly between versions. Adjust your path accordingly.

  On the Mac, set FLASHPLAYER_DEBUGGER to the absolute path of 'Flash Player.app/Contents/MacOS/Flash Player Debugger'

  On Linux, set FLASHPLAYER_DEBUGGER to the absolute path of 'flashplayerdebugger'.

Adobe AIR Integration Kit (optional, for SWF output only)

This version of Apache Royale was certified for use with Adobe AIR 32.0 and is compatible with version 3.1 and up. The Adobe AIR integration kit can be downloaded from:

Windows: https://airdownload.adobe.com/air/win/download/32.0/AdobeAIRSDK.zip

Mac: https://airdownload.adobe.com/air/mac/download/32.0/AdobeAIRSDK.dmg

After you download the AIR SDK, unzip it and place it in a directory of your choice.

• Environment variable

  Set AIR_HOME to the absolute path of the AIR SDK directory.

Building the source

Linux support is currently experimental and while it is possible to compile the SDK it has not been fully tested.

Royale requires code from several other Apache Royale git repositories. To get these repositories, change to the repository root ('royale-asjs') and run:

ant all

This will clone the repositories, checkout the develop branches then build those repositories in the correct order.

Some more helpful commands:

• To rebuild, run:

  ant

• To clean the build, of everything other than the downloaded third-party dependencies, run:

  ant clean

• To generate a source distribution package and a binary distribution package, run:

  ant -Dbuild.number=<YYYYMMDD> -Dbuild.noprompt= release

  The packages can be found in the "out" subdirectory.

• To get a brief listing of all the targets, run:

  ant -projecthelp

Using the Binary Distribution

If you are not interested in SWF output, the binary distribution can just be unzipped into a folder.

If you want SWF output, use NPM. Run:

• Mac

  sudo npm install @apache-royale/royale-js -g

  or for both JS and SWF output:

sudo npm install @apache-royale/royale-js-swf -g --foreground-scripts

• Windows

  npm install @apache-royale/royale-js -g

  or for both JS and SWF output:

  npm install @apache-royale/royale-js-swf -g --foreground-scripts

Maven

The Royale Maven build generally doesn't require an installation of Maven as we utilise the Maven Wrapper which automatically fetches the right version of Maven. However, you can also build using your local Maven installation.

If you want to use your local installation, just use mvn instead of mvnw

Maven Prerequisites

The Maven build does a prerequisite check before actually starting the build, so it should point out to you parts that aren't setup correctly.

So-far there is only one environment-variable the Maven build uses, this is the same the Ant build uses. For details on this please refer to the chapter of the Ant setup guide titled: Flash Player Content Debugger. If you don't provide this environment variable, the build will be able to build, it will just not run any tests that require the FlashPlayer.

All other parts are automatically downloaded using the tooling we built for the Apache Flex project. This will automatically download missing things like playerglobal or airglobal files.

NOTE: After Adobe finally ended the life of the FlashPlayer, most of the automatically downloaded files are no longer available in the locations they were previously hosted on. Therefore, the automatic fetching of artifacts no longer works. The team is currently working on a replacement for the playerglobal. Right now it is probably the simplest approach to request a snapshot of the adobe artifacts from someone who has a copy of them or to build without the option-with-swf profiles.

Building with Maven

As the Royale repository is split up into 3 parts, we have to run 3 separate Maven builds.

Even if the Maven build doesn't require the projects to be checked out in specially named directories, for the sake of simplicity we will assume you checked out everything in the following directory structure:

• {checkout-root}
  • royale-compiler
  • royale-typedefs
  • royale-asjs

Then starting from the checkout-root directory, the commands look as follows:

cd royale-compiler
./mvnw install

cd ../royale-typedefs
./mvnw install

cd ../royale-asjs
./mvnw install

This should build the basic framework and you can start writing your firs Maven based Royale applications.

However, there are ways to build additional parts and ways to customize how things are built. For this we utilize Maven profiles.

We use the following general rules of thumb for naming profiles:

• If activating a profile adds new modules to the build and generally builds things which aren't built without activating the profile, the profile name starts with with-
• If activating a profile changes the way something is built, the profile name starts with option-with-.

Listing of with- profiles:

• with-distribution: Additionally creates distributions. These are usually used by Ant builds or IDE integrations. Assembling the distributions usually takes some additional time, therefore it is only built on request. On the CI server this can be used to build the binaries the Royale Installer can download. When used locally there is also an option to set a Maven property distributionTargetFolder. Adding -DdistributionTargetFolder={some path} to the build options of the royale-asjs module, will also create a local unzipped version of the Royale development kit, which can be used by IDEs to provide Royale support.
• with-examples: Also build all examples
• with-manualtests: Also builds the modules in the manualtests directory of the royale-asjs repository.
• with-ui-testsuite: Additionally builds the ui testsuite in the royale-asjs repository. This testsuite automatically deploys applications built in the examples on a local webserver and automates a local Browser instance to click through the applications (NOTE: This currently might require a bit of tweaking)

Listing of option-with- profiles:

• option-with-cordova: Additionally builds all example using the Cordova tooling
• option-with-flex-sdk-tests: Additionally runs some tests from the old Apache Flex SDK
• option-with-sass-compile: The Themes contain a lot of Modules, where each contains SASS resources. Compiling all of these on every build would only slow down the build. Especially because the SASS resources are only changed very infrequently. Therefore, the compiled CSS files are checked in. When enabling this profile the checked in CSS resources are replaced by freshly compiled versions, which then can be checked in.
• option-with-swf: Per default the Royale build only builds the JavaScript-only version. This can be used to build web-based applications. If you however wish to build Flash and Air versions, you need to activate this profile in order for also building the Flash enabled versions of all libraries.

Using Royale

In order to get started using Royale, you are invited to follow along with the Quick Start Guide.

Thanks for using Apache Royale. Enjoy!