Installing the Flex Builder Plugin 3.2 in Eclipse 3.5 Walkthrough

To develop client-side applications in Flex, the best tool to use is Flex Builder. Flex Builder is available as either a standalone application or an Eclipse plug-in. In this walk-through we'll be installing the plug-in version.

The following walk-through was written for Mac OS X 10.6. The instructions should work with minor modifications on Windows and other platforms.

If you are interested in installing on an older version of OS X, see this earlier article on installing Flex Builder 3.2 in Eclipse 3.4.2 on Mac OS X 10.5.

Prerequisites

1. Java 6. If you have Mac OS X 10.5 or 10.6 and are up to date, you have Java 6.
2. Eclipse 3.5 JEE, 32 bit, Carbon
   

Installation

1. Head over to the Flex Builder download page and download the Flex Builder plugin for Eclipse. Make sure you grab the Eclipse plug-in version - not the first option - to avoid having to download two large files instead of one!
   
   Note that for Flex 4, Flex Builder has been renamed Flash Builder, so the download page and links will likely be different in the future.
   
2. After the file has completed downloading, locate it on your system. If you are on Mac OS X, you just downloaded a disk image. Mount the disk image by double-clicking on it.
   
3. Now run the installer. It should be named FB_Plugin_Mac_Installer.
4. Note: If you have recently installed Mac OS X 10.6, you may now see the following dialog:
   
   If you don't see this dialog, great! Just continue at the next step. But if you do see the above dialog, don't fear. The reason you see it is because you are on an Intel mac and the installer is a PowerPC (ppc) application. Yes, sadly, not all applications are Universal Binaries. Luckily it isn't a big deal to install Rosetta. Just click the "Install" button on the dialog. You should then see Software Update find the correct update to apply:
   
   When the installation of Rosetta is complete, you'll see this dialog:
   
   Now go back to Finder and relaunch the installer.
   
5. When the installer launches, Mac OS X will warn you that this application was downloaded from the Internet. That's OK, so click Open.
6. The installer will prompt you for your language. Select what you want to use click OK.
7. Click next at the Introduction panel
8. Select the radio button next to "I accept" and click Next
9. At the Choose Install Folder panel, you can accept the default location. In my case I already have Flex Builder installed, so I will choose an alternative location named "Adobe Flex Builder 3.2 Plug-in". Then click Next.
10. At the Choose Eclipse Folder panel, click the Choose button and navigate to your Eclipse folder. In the "Installing Eclipse 3.5" walkthrough we installed into /Applications/eclipse-3.5, so I've selected this folder. Then click Next.
11. You should see a dialog appear that says "Supported version of Eclipse not found". Just click "Proceed with Caution".
12. At the Additional Installations panel, it is suggested that you uncheck the option to install Adobe Flash Player 9. You should manually install the latest Flash Player 10 debug player later. You may also install JSEclipse if you will be doing any JavaScript development (e.g. an HTML-based AIR application). After you've made your decision, click Next.
13. You should now see the Pre-Installation Summary panel. Click Install.
14. The installer will now take a few minutes to perform the installation.
15. When the installation is complete, you should see the following Install Complete panel.
16. Congratulations! You've now installed the Flex Builder 3.2 plug-in for Eclipse 3.5.