title: CI-friendly automated builds for as3/flex projects
body: <p><strong>Disclaimer</strong>: I am relatively unfamiliar with the flash build processes, so some/all of this may be misinformed nonsense.  Please feel free to suggest alternative approaches.</p>
  
  <p>We're currently developing a flex web app and our build situation is far from ideal.  At present we're (as in individual developers) just building using FlashBuilder and deploying manually.  The programmers are currently screaming bloody murder for two reasons, though:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>The lack of CI is like going back to the stone age</li>
  <li>We don't much care for FlashBuilder</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>(Note: We're only using FlashBuilder because it was the easiest way to set up a flex project in conjunction with <a href="http://away3d.com/">Away3d</a> and get it building / rendering correctly -- it's a stopgap solution).</p>
  
  <p>As a predominately .NET development shop, we're used to doing continuous integration as well as continuous deployment.  Ideally, we'd like to get something comparable to this for our flash projects without tying ourselves to a particular IDE.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Requirements:</strong></p>
  
  <p>The build process must be: </p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>.. runnable via the commandline</li>
  <li>.. runnable on both developer and CI build machines (and certainly not requiring an IDE!)</li>
  <li>.. preferably as IDE-independent as possible (pragmatism will kick in though; if this causes a lot of friction we'll just pick one).   </li>
  <li>.. able to run on Windows (we develop using Windows)</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>We don't mind a touch of duplication or a few manual steps (e.g. tarting up the build scripts if we add a new project via an IDE, or generating one configuration from another if tools exist), but the less duplication / maintenance required the better.  </p>
  
  <p>I've read quite a few articles / blog posts and watched some short screencasts, but most of them are very thin on the ground on how the build system sits alongside IDEs.  Most articles/screencasts have the same formula: How to create a "Hello World" build using a single file &amp; text editors (no IDE).</p>
  
  <p>I've not seen the topic of multiple libraries/projects etc. being broached, either.</p>
  
  <p>After reading around the issue for a while, I'm considering investigating the following options:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><a href="http://projectsprouts.org/">Project Sprouts</a></li>
  <li><a href="http://flexmojos.sonatype.org/">Flexmojos</a></li>
  <li><a href="http://www.servebox.org/maven-flex-plugin/">Maven Flex Plugin</a></li>
  <li><a href="https://github.com/devboy/buildr_as3">buildr as3</a></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Does anyone have any experience of the above solutions (or others I'm unaware of) and, if so, what do you make of them?  Any help / pointers appreciated.</p>