Installing and configuring Antennae

Antennae is an open-source project designed to automate the building and testing of Flex applications. It uses Ant and Java to provide cross platform utilities to compile Flex libraries, Flex applications, generate FlexUnit TestSuites, and run FlexUnit tests in an automated manner. Antennae also defines a framework for building complex projects with multiple dependencies and intelligently handling recompilation.

1. Download and Unpack Antennae

Antennae is hosted on Google code at the following location:
http://code.google.com/p/antennae/

Download the most recent version of Antennae-*.zip.

Unpack the zip into a location of your choice. The Antennae zip packages everything under a subdirectory called Antennae.

2. Antennae Contents

Antennae is broken up into multiple pieces to make inclusion in a project as straightforward as possible. Below are the major pieces:

• lib: Includes compiled Java and Flex utilities for TestSuite generation, command line FlexUnit running and reporting, the FlexUnit library, and a FlexUnit application template.
• src: Source for the Java and Flex utilities included in the lib directory, excluding FlexUnit which is available elsewhere.
• templates: Antennae templates for building Flex libraries, Flex applications, FlexUnit applications, and Flex projects with complex dependencies.
• tools: Generic Ant target, task, and property definitions used to automate building and testing.
• tutorial: Step-by-step examples of how to use basic Ant features and Antennae templates.

Additionally the base directory includes documentation and sample files used to configure Antennae for use on various platforms.

3. Configuring Antennae

In order to run and experiment with all of the included templates and tutorial information included with Antennae it first needs to be configured. To provide easy cross platform and multiple developer support Antennae centralizes all of the properties most likely to change into a single file which can be customized on an as needed basis. The two files in the base directory build-user.properties.mac and build-user.properties.win are starting points for configuring Antennae. Linux users should use the build-user.properties.mac file as an example but note that certain features may not be available due to limitations of the Flex framework.

Once the starting file has been identified make a copy and name it build-user.properties (this name is the same regardless of the platform). The next step will be to customize the file for your system. The file can be edited in any text editor.

The key property that must be set is flex2.dir. This must be changed to point to the location of a Flex 2 or Flex 3 distribution (base directory that has bin, lib, and player as subdirectories). Either the Flex SDK included with Flex Builder or the standalone Flex SDK can be used.

If the command line FlexUnit automation tools will be used the flex2.standalone.player property must be set. It is recommended that the debug version of the standalone player be used. Using the debug version allows stack traces to be captured which helps in determining how a test failed.

The tomcat.webapps.dir property only needs to be set if running the deploy target for the tutorial/multi/app/ sample.

Lastly the various properties prefixed with air are for compiling, running, and packaging Flex based AIR applications. For additional information on the configuration of these properties please see the Antennae wiki documentation available at http://code.google.com/p/antennae/w/list.

4. Next Steps

To quickly see how Antennae builds and tests projects the tutorial directory can be explored. Running Ant with a target of build or test will walk through all of the projects in the tutorial directory calling the correct target on each. In particular the test target demonstrates both a successful and unsuccessful FlexUnit run.

The base directory includes a README.txt file that gives an overview of how Antennae is setup and the philosophy behind building and testing projects with Antennae. The tutorial and template directories each include a README.txt file that explains the intent and usage of each of the projects included in those directories.