Flex update - August, 2012

Flex Update
Alan Greenblatt – http://blattchatt.com – @agreenblatt

2011 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.

From Flex Store to Mobile Trader

2011 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. 2

What Happened?

 PR: Flash Player mobile browser plugin
 Flex blog post
 Apache announcement


Apache Flex 4.8 – Incubating Released!

 Parity Release with Adobe Flex 4.6
 Legal hurdles behind us
 We’ve learned a lot
 Future releases will be much easier
 Pending fixes & features can now go into
the code


What is Apache?

 Apache Software Foundation (ASF) provides legal, financial and
organizational support for a broad range of open source/development
projects.
 Only supports collaborative projects that need infrastructure for a community
of developers
 Example project - Apache web server used by 65% of all web sites (approx.
420 million)!
 No more than 15 developers collaborating at any given time.
 Anyone can easily join, contribute and influence projects.
 Project evolved from incubator to top-level projects.

 Apache Flex
 Big, active community

 Apache Cordova (PhoneGap)

http://blattchat.com/2012/03/09/what-exactly-is-apache/


There Are Different Kinds Of Open Source

 Adobe Open Source
 Submit Patches. Adobe will accept patch if it has time and patch is deemed
important enough
 Wait For Releases. Maybe two in one year. Releases must synch up with
other Adobe product schedules.

 Other Open Source Projects
 Anybody can make changes.

 Apache Open Source
 Submit Patches. All you have to do is convince a Committer to review and
accept.
 Become a Committer. Committers can check in anything they want (unless it
gets vetoed.
 Become a Release Manager. Any committer can make a release.


Apache Way

 The Mailing List
 If it didn’t happen on the mailing list, it didn’t happen
 Do-ocracy
 What matters the most is what code gets checked in
 Voting/Vetoes
 When code gets checked in, it can get vetoed
 When you want to release code, all you need is three positive votes
 Conflict Resolution
 Each person can submit their version in code so you can see which one works
better


Quiz

 What are the top 3 items currently on the Apache Flex roadmap?


Trick Question

 What are the top 3 items currently on the Apache Flex roadmap?

 There is no roadmap. Anyone can work on whatever they want.


Apache Releases

 Apache releases are not tied to any other schedule or roadmap or
agenda.
 Release process might be slower while in incubation because of additional
legal and logistical steps.
 Whenever there are good new contributions, someone can make a
release.
 Healthy projects are releasing every couple of months or so.
 Releases are tested by the community
 No dedicated QA team
 There will be a validation test suite
 Releases are Source Code “packages”
 Have to download source, build, test, and use.
 Binary “convenience” distributions will be available


Adobe Flex & Apache Flex

 Adobe Flex
 Supported by Adobe:
 Purchase Support Contracts
 Call Adobe on the phone.
 Adobe engineers will fix critical bugs in Adobe Flex 4.6 and earlier.
 File bugs at http://bugs.adobe.com/flex
 Releases available at http://sourceforge.net/adobe/flexsdk/wiki/About/
 Flex 4.6 supported by Flash Player & AIR runtimes for at least the next 5 years
 Apache Flex
 Supported by the Apache Flex community
 Use the flex-users@incubator.apache.org mailing list
 File bugs at https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FLEX
 Releases available at http://incubator.apache.org/flex/


Must Reads…

http://www.adobe.com/go/flex_whitepaper

http://www.adobe.com/go/flashplayer_roadmap


SDK Contributions

 Core SDK
 Advanced Data Visualization Components
 Documentation
 Mustella
 Full Time Engineers


Other Contributions

 Compiler
 Falcon 1.0 AS compiler (Q4)
 Falcon JS

 New Spark components (not yet released)
 ViewStack
 Accordion
 DateField
 DateChooser
 Enhanced DataGrid

 BlazeDS


Flash Builder

 Development of Flash Builder continues.

 Adobe plans to maintain support for Flex projects in updates to Flash
Builder 4.x, including additional work to ensure Apache Flex based SDKs
can work within Flash Builder.

 Adobe will evaluate integrating an Apache-derived Falcon MXML
compiler into Flash Builder if and when a suitable compiler is available
from the open-source project.

 In order to better support future Apache-derived Flex SDKs, Design
View, Data Centric Development tools, and Flash Catalyst workflows will
be removed in updated 4.x versions of Flash Builder.


Runtime

 Desktop
 Adobe is committed to Flash Player and AIR

 Mobile
 Adobe will no longer develop Flash Player in the mobile browser
 Adobe is committed to Adobe AIR on current and future devices and OS
updates including iOS 5, iPhone 5, iPad 3, and Android Ice Cream Sandwich

Adobe will test future releases of Flash Player and AIR against the Flex 4.6 SDK
and maintain backwards compatibility for five years (November 2016)


July 2006
September 2008

June 2007 December 2008

January 2006 April 2010

April 2007 December 2008
May 2010

September 2006

October 2008

2006 2011

Let’s Make It Great!


Flex update - August, 2012

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