Installing the Adobe AIR SDK on a Mac

Since at work I work on a Mac, I had to install the AIR SDK on my machine to compile AIR apps with Eclipse and FDT. At first this can seem a bit tedious, messing  around with .profile files in the Bash Shell, while its actually quite simple if you follow the instructions I describe below. (These instructions show you how to modify your path environment variable, so you can run your adl from whatever directory you are in.)

First Download the AIR SDK and unpack it in the root of your hard drive (mine is in /AIRSDK/ ) then;

1. Open the Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal)

2. Make sure you’re in your home directory by typing: ‘cd‘ and press enter.

You see something like this: Supercalifunk-a-ilistic:~ sidneydekoning$
(the ~ is an indication that we are in the home dir )

3. We need to check if two specific files are present. Run the ‘ls -la‘ command ( the -la allows you to see hidden files)

4. Look for a file named either .profile or .bashrc.
5. If you dont have the .profile or .bashrc file, then create the .profile file with the following command:
pico .profile or pico .bashrc

6. If you do have the file, open the .profile or .bashrc file with a text editor. Like this;
open -a TextEdit .profile
open -a TextEdit .bashrc

7. Look for a line that looks similar to this:

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin
(if the file was empty you can just add this to the file)
8. Add the path to the /bin directory to the end of this line. For example, if /bin is at /AIRSDK/bin, the export path should look something like this:

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin:/AIRSDK/bin

making sure to separate the entries with a colon. That’s a “ : ”
10. Save and close the file. If you edited the file with pico, you press: CTRL-x, it askes if want to save, and you then type ‘y’ and hit enter or return.

11. Now that you are back in the Terminal, run the following command: . .bashrc or . .profile depending on what file you edited. (The command includes . .bashrc or . .profile, the extra point is necessary)

12. To see if it all worked, type in the Terminal: echo $PATH if you get a result of the line you just added to that file, take a coffee an celebrate! (else restart your machine and begin from step 11 and save the coffee for later)

13. Now from the terminal type: adl
If you see something like this:
Too few arguments.
Usage: adt -package air_file app_xml [ file_or_dir | -C dir file_or_dir ... ] …

It means the air sdk has been added to your path and you are ready to roll!
(If you get an error that the file cannot be found, then check the following things:
- Make sure the bin and runtime directories are included in the directory.
- Make sure you included the path to /bin correctly in the PATH environment variable.
- Make sure you either opened a new Terminal window, or ran source on your configuration file. (that is the . .bashrc command).

If it didnt work, explain your question in the comments and i’ll try and help.

Have fun developing AIR!

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