My 2 cents is that the project should be focusing on moving away from a third-party, proprietary and frankly dead platform. I'm also not sure what actionscript 4 has to do with anything, it's not like there will be a ground-up rewrite of the entire project to port it to a new language. Even a mass, automated conversion (were it possible) would be, in purpose, purely for the benefit of yet again, maintaining compatability with a third-party, proprietary platform. In fact it would be worse than that, it would bind the project specifically to that third-party, closed source target runtime. It's discussions like this that are at the root of the previous concerns I've raised which can be summarized as such: is flex it's own product, or is everyone just working for adobe.
I know it's a lot of work, but I really think we need to replace AIR and Flash Player as the target for this project. Doing so would create a truly standalone, apache driven product future-proof, omni-platform application development. I didn't want to really get into this discussion yet but, since it came up... As for the question of AIR on iOS, Adobe created a LLVM frontend to convert actionscript to LLVM-IR, which adds all of the benefits of LLVM for optimization, then emits ARM. The runtime (which is probably C++ source, since the entire Tamarin engine is C++) is precompiled already to AMR libs, linkin is done, etc etc, lots of proprietary magic and you've got an final, native assembly. This is called AOT or ahead of time compilation, rather than using JIT (as the flash player uses) in order to comply with anti-jit license terms of IOS development. The AVM2 is (mostly) open source under the Mozilla Public License, but has recently gone missing from mozillas mercurial repos. It's tough to track down, but you can still find "tamarin-redux" and get a zip of the source tree. I believe the AOT compiler source code is present as well. On Tue, Dec 9, 2014 at 2:07 PM, Gary Yang <flashflex...@gmail.com> wrote: > just to bring this up... > > On Fri, Jun 6, 2014 at 1:45 PM, Gary Yang <flashflex...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > Java Spring is a very good example for framework evolving, for Flex, I > > think it is the similar situation: > > > > The key function is > > 1) Mxml > > 2)Binding > > 3)Data structure such as IList implementations > > > > on top of Mxml/Binding/Data is 1) UIComponent 2) Skinning 3)network > > components > > > > and then osmf, reporting, text .... > > > > I think from Flex5, we should modularize these into different kinds of > > projects: > > > > 1) Flex data, to provide an infrastructure for 1) mxml -> as generation, > > 2) reactive programming(Binding); 3) related data structures; > > > > 2) Based on Flex data, Flex UI, to provide the basic UI implementation( > in > > Flex4 skinning way ), could be multi projects. > > > > 3) Based on Flex data, Network/Native components, http, websocket and > peer > > to peer, native devices communications. > > > > and then projects that specified in different fields: video, text, > > reporting .... > > > > I see Flex as a tool sets to solve complex user interface, so Flash > player > > is the only way to work in desktop web, so the language has to express at > > least as much as AS3, so if possible, using Java as a language will be > > enough to downgrade into most other languages. > > > > Just a little thought. > > > > -Gary > > > > > > > > > > > > On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 8:06 AM, <f...@dfguy.us> wrote: > > > >> Right, it could be written in it and not cross compiled. It could be > that > >> the project is what get cross compiled and then packaged with the > runtime. > >> I think though that this could be a good opportunity to improve the > runtime > >> in general as was previously talked about with the AS4 plans but I guess > >> we'll have to wait and continue to ask Adobe to work on it. > >> > >> David > >> > >> > >> > >> -----Original Message----- > >> From: Harbs <harbs.li...@gmail.com> > >> To: dev@flex.apache.org > >> Sent: Thu, 05 Jun 2014 6:56 AM > >> Subject: Re: Let's talk about Flex 5 > >> > >> I don’t think that’s correct. Unless I’m mistaken, the AIR iOS runtime > is > >> written in Objective C from the get-go. (Although it might be written in > >> C++. Dunno…) > >> > >> Whether or not it makes sense to rewrite the AIR iOS runtime in Swift is > >> an entirely different question — which probably only the engineers at > Adobe > >> could really answer… > >> > >> On Jun 5, 2014, at 2:51 PM, f...@dfguy.us wrote: > >> > >> > My understanding is that the entire runtime gets cross compiled into > >> objective c. So Adobe would have to rewrite this to use swift, but I > think > >> the same process would basically be used. It's possible though that > swift > >> could enable additional features. The limitation on loading compiled > byte > >> code is purely just a licensing and not a technical limitation that > imposed > >> by Apple. > >> > > >> > David > >> > > >> > > >> > > >> > -----Original Message----- > >> > From: Harbs <harbs.li...@gmail.com> > >> > To: dev@flex.apache.org > >> > Sent: Thu, 05 Jun 2014 1:17 AM > >> > Subject: Re: Let's talk about Flex 5 > >> > > >> > Really? The only way I know of outputting ActionScript for iOS is > using > >> AIR for iOS which is just a swf with an embedded runtime. > >> > > >> > On Jun 5, 2014, at 4:26 AM, f...@dfguy.us wrote: > >> > > >> >> There's already the ability to cross compile to objective c for iOS > >> > > >> > >> > >> > > > -- Jesse Nicholson
