Flash Professional CS5/CS6 doesn't recognise the new SDK

[ajwfrost]

Raised by @rogerclarkmelbourne that Flash Pro CS6 doesn't work with the latest SDK - we've just checked and whilst it recognises 33.0.2.338 (calling it 33.0.2.339) it doesn't work with 33.1.x: "The selected folder does not contain a valid AIR SDK"

Initial checks - that air-sdk-description.xml are valid and adt -version works - show that these are all fine. Needs some more investigating..

[rogerclarkmelbourne]

Thanks

[IntelliMedia-se]

Thank you for reporting this and for letting us know that at least AIR SDK version 33.0.2.338 works in Flash Pro CS6. Tried latest version 33.1.1.259 and some earlier 31.1.x version but they still all result in "The selected folder does not contain a valid AIR SDK"

Does anyone know if a fix is on its way?

[rogerclarkmelbourne]

There has not been any response to this in the last 3 months, so I suspect its not going to be fixed.

I did some research, and potentially the problem is related to the Java runtime version which Flash CS6 uses, which may be 32 bit, but the latest tools may require the 64 bit Java runtime. I'm not sure if this is the problem or why there would be any difference between the two runtime versions.

Unfortunately, its unclear what checks Flash CS6 performs on the AIR SDK.

I don't know if there is any realtime processing logging tool which could be used to monitor whether Flash is running one of the ADT utilities, in which case it may be possible to debug what is going on.

But unfortunately I don't have time to do this

[ajwfrost]

The Java thing is a potential clue .. 32-bit is fine for us but I believe we now have a hard requirement for Java 7, perhaps CS6 uses a different version and can't load ADT.

Obviously CS6 being somewhat old (and out of support?) I'm not sure what mechanism it uses: the recent tools just load in and call "adt -version" so there shouldn't have been any difference. But if it's that it can't run ADT, then we'd need to see if its Java version can be updated, otherwise it's not going to be able to use the new packaging tools..

[Matvii-Jarosh]

@ajwfrost tell me if there is any news that you can run the AIR SDK on flash cs6?

[ajwfrost]

@Matvii-Jarosh I can't find a machine here that still has CS6 on it, are you able to check in the installation folder and see if there's any Java runtime there? (Not sure if you're on mac or windows, instructions may vary, but if you can browse into the program files / application area and into the Flash Professional CS6 install location, it may be a folder called "jre" or similar).

e.g. in Animate I have c:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Animate 2024\jre and then I can go into a command-line and run java -version:

"c:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Animate 2024\jre\bin\java.exe" -version
java version "17.0.10" 2024-01-16 LTS
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 17.0.10+11-LTS-240)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 17.0.10+11-LTS-240, mixed mode, sharing)

So if you see something similar that's Java 1.6 or thereabouts, you can try renaming that JRE folder into something as a backup, and then adding Java 1.7 or Java 1.8 in there to replace it? This should then allow ADT.jar to run.

I think we had a specific reason why we had to update to use Java 1.7 format for ADT but will double-check...

thanks

[Matvii-Jarosh]

@Matvii-Jarosh I can't find a machine here that still has CS6 on it, are you able to check in the installation folder and see if there's any Java runtime there? (Not sure if you're on mac or windows, instructions may vary, but if you can browse into the program files / application area and into the Flash Professional CS6 install location, it may be a folder called "jre" or similar).

e.g. in Animate I have c:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Animate 2024\jre and then I can go into a command-line and run java -version:

"c:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Animate 2024\jre\bin\java.exe" -version
java version "17.0.10" 2024-01-16 LTS
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 17.0.10+11-LTS-240)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 17.0.10+11-LTS-240, mixed mode, sharing)

So if you see something similar that's Java 1.6 or thereabouts, you can try renaming that JRE folder into something as a backup, and then adding Java 1.7 or Java 1.8 in there to replace it? This should then allow ADT.jar to run.

I think we had a specific reason why we had to update to use Java 1.7 format for ADT but will double-check...

thanks

sorry, there is no such thing, I looked at all the folders except licenses because they are repeated and there are only .jar files, but there is no java or jre itself

[ajwfrost]

Okay thanks -> if you get hold of our latest AIR 51.0 SDK, could you please then copy the adt.jar file from the below zip over the top of the existing one (from the 'lib' folder) and then see if Flash Professional accepts this one?

Whilst it will perhaps allow the SDK to be recognised, there are dependencies that the AIR Developer Tools has which may then not work properly because of the Java runtime version. When trying it here, using Java 1.6 32-bit to run this ADT version, packaging an Android APK failed because of the use of the BouncyCastle jar files for code-signature details. But we could look at either running those under a separate JVM (like we would for Gradle), or pulling in a different set of BouncyCastle libraries if we detect the older Java runtime..

So this is just the first step. I would be interested in the behaviour of Flash CS6 with this, with the different options for packaging etc.

thanks adt_for_jre1.6.zip

[Matvii-Jarosh]

unfortunately it didn’t work out, I forgot to tell you that I have windows, I tried it with both flex sdk and air sdk

[ajwfrost]

Hmm... shame; so I'm not actually sure how Flash Professional CS6 is trying to work out whether that folder does contain a valid AIR SDK or not. Without having a copy myself and playing around a bit ...

I think your best bet here would be to continue to use CS6 with older versions of the AIR SDK (or their built-in one) in order to create libraries i.e. SWC files that contain your assets. So, use it mostly for the design tools / timelines and animations etc; and then separately you can use the later AIR SDKs along with VSCode or Moonshine or similar, in order to create the application and package it with ADT.

thanks

[Matvii-Jarosh]

I understand what you mean, at the moment my plan is to simply export everything to swf and assemble it with a new adt

[Fancy2209]

If CS6 is required for testing it seems Adobe still hosts the Trial Installer https://trials.adobe.com/AdobeProducts/legacy/99CABBAC-C975-4A06-8D99-064C6871EE80/FLPR/12/win32/FlashPro_12_LS16.exe From my understanding it'll activate itself if you install the trial and then login with a Adobe Account with CC

[MerlinEl]

Okay thanks -> if you get hold of our latest AIR 51.0 SDK, could you please then copy the adt.jar file from the below zip over the top of the existing one (from the 'lib' folder) and then see if Flash Professional accepts this one?

Whilst it will perhaps allow the SDK to be recognised, there are dependencies that the AIR Developer Tools has which may then not work properly because of the Java runtime version. When trying it here, using Java 1.6 32-bit to run this ADT version, packaging an Android APK failed because of the use of the BouncyCastle jar files for code-signature details. But we could look at either running those under a separate JVM (like we would for Gradle), or pulling in a different set of BouncyCastle libraries if we detect the older Java runtime..

So this is just the first step. I would be interested in the behaviour of Flash CS6 with this, with the different options for packaging etc.

thanks adt_for_jre1.6.zip

Thank you ajwfrost, from me replacing atd.jar worked fine. Im using [AIR 33.1.1.935]