Setup on Linux

Come on... if you're a Linux geek you don't need any handholding!

That said, if you would like to contribute instructions for those without your prowess, please post them on the Developers list and we will incorporate them.

Gentoo

Andrew Lorien kindly wrote up some instructions for Gentoo:

INSTALL

to build the trunk (Flex4)
ensure you have Ant 1.7.0, java JDK (not JRE), and subversion

Create a folder for the source code, and change to that directory. Checkout the latest version of the source (you'll be getting all branches, which could take a while. if you just want a particular branch, see elsewhere in these docs for links to the skeleton and the branch structure)

svn checkout http://opensource.adobe.com/svn/opensource/flex/sdk

CONFIGURE

In the trunk and/or the branch you wish to build, run

source setup.sh 

you should get two lines "Setting default ANT_HOME" and "Setting default JAVA_HOME", with no errors.
If setup reports an error, work out for your own distribution what they are and edit the section just after

elif [ $OS = "Linux" ];

on gentoo, i have:

ANT_HOME=/usr/share/ant-core 
JAVA_HOME=`java-config -J | sed -n 's/[\\\/]bin[\\\/]java//p'` 

FlashPlayerTrust

to allow flash player to access files on your local filesystem, add one or more flash player trust files (thanks to Abdul Qabiz)
For individual users:

/home/<user>/.macromedia/Flash_Player/#Security/FlashPlayerTrust/<filename>.cfg 

or

/home/<user>/.macromedia/Macromedia/Flash_Player/#Security/FlashPlayerTrust/<filename>.cfg

For all users:

/etc/adobe/FlashPlayerTrust/<filename>.cfg

The config file needs only have one line, the name of your directory you want trusted (ie. "/usr/<companyName>/flash"). The documenation for Windows and Mac suggest that this file must be named with a ".cfg" suffix but it seems to reads all files in that directory.

mm.cfg

To debug the flash player, you need an mm.cfg file in your home directory, containing at least these two lines:

TraceOutputFileEnable=1 
ErrorReportingEnable=1

(thanks Chris Hill)

BUILD

Finally, do a test build of the flex sdk with

ant main checkintests

after a lot of debugging output, you should see a flash player window with lots of controls being activated in turn. if you get a mustellaresultsparser error, remember that you're using in-development software - the build was successful, but the application isn't finished.

now read How to build and test - note that you'll find the standalone flash player in trunk/in/player/lnx/flashplayer