A powerful tool to synchronize in real-time Adobe Flash Catalyst and Adobe Flash Builder.

DISCLAIMER

This tool manipulates files on your computer so use it wisely. I decline any responsibility for any loss of data due to the wrong use of this tool.

This is an alpha version, not fully tested yet so use it at your own risk.

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I know, it sounds scary, but you must be aware of these points. That said, there’s an automatic backup function to protect your data as much as possible so you can easily revert to previous versions.

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[Edit: It's not possible anymore to edit Catalyst's preferences in its second beta but there's a workaround here]

Overview

Adobe Flash Builder 4 and Adobe Flash Catalyst (both in their first second beta version at the time I’m writing this) could make a great couple. The rough code, the power of data on one side, the fanciness of graphic design, the fun of animations on the other side, both are meant to end up together at some point. But obviously there are still some pretty rough edges and both just don’t seem to be ready to move in together. Builder can import Catalyst’s projects, but it means recreating a new project every time. And on the other hand, even if Builder can export its projects in FXP as well, Catalyst can simply not read them. Bummer.

So everyone goes with his own approach for an as-smooth-as-possible-workflow. I listed some and offered my own one not so long ago, remember. Ok, that was one step in the right direction, but one could hardly call that smooth and straightforward.

So I decided to come up with my own solution to speed a bit up the inevitable happy ending of the Catalyst/Builder love story. And that solution is CatalystBuilderSync.

Current Features

  • - One-way (Catalyst or Builder data only) or two-way (merge) synchronization
  • - Automatic synchronization
  • - Can synchronize entire projects or simply sub-folders (like the default components folder for example)
  • - Automatic activation: whenever a project is opened in Catalyst, if this project is registered in CatalystBuilderSync it is automatically activated (and the other projects are deactivated accordingly).
  • - Deletions synchronization
  • - Revert to previous version functionality: every time an operation is performed an incremental backup of both Catalyst and Builder projects are created so the user can restore his projects to a previous state
  • - Auto-update functionality to automatically stay up to date with further versions of CatalystBuilderSync
  • - File extension filter: CatalystBuilderSync copies only specific files (mxml, as, xml, png, jpg, jpeg, gif, ico, swf, swc, ttf, f4v) and doesn’t affect other files that might be present in the projects folders (like hidden subversion files for example). You can freely add other filetypes specific to your own projects.

Planned Features

  • - Windowshade functionality to reduce the real estate occupied by CatalystBuilderSync to the active project only
  • - Stay on top functionality
  • - Notifications to give a visual feedback when a synchronization occurred. It might also become complementary to the auto-sync functionality: instead of synchronizing all the time a notification could pop up every time a modification in the projects occur (or at regular interval) and let the user decide when and what kind of synchronization he wants to trigger.
  • - Improving CatalystBuilderSync UI: what’s the point in having a software that simplifies exchanges between Catalyst and Builder and doesn’t fully take all the benefit of it? :)

Screenshots

Mate example

Main Window

Mate example

Project Details

Mate example

Revert to previous version

Mate example

Preferences

Screencasts

It might look a little bit long to watch all of them at first but I would most definitely advise you to do so. There are some precious informations there about how to set up Catalyst and Flash Builder, how the auto-synchronization works and a lot of other things. If you’re here to have a quick look at how CatalystBuilderSync works though, you can skip the 1st part and jump straight to the 2nd video: First Synchronizations, that’s where the tasty things begin. ;)

Part 1 - CatalystBuilderSync Setup

Part 2 - First synchronizations

Part 3 - Work with multiple projects

Part 4 - Revert to previous version

Known Issues

  • - The order the projects show up in your list can be different every time you restart the application. Not a major drawback but it’ll be fixed eventually
  • - There’s a bug at the moment with the ApplicationUpdater framework and Flex 4. The only walk-around I’ve found for now is to deactivate the UI part of the updater so whenever the auto-update is activated in the preferences and that there’s a new version available on the server the update occurs automatically without asking for the user’s agreement. See the bright side: at least that way I’m sure everybody will be up to date until I come up with a better solution. :)
  • - There’s currently no limit for the amount of backups so if you work with big projects it might become problematic at some point and you might want to delete manually some of your backup folders. I’ll explain in the next few days how to do that until I add an archive manager (pretty soon).
  • - There’s a tiny issue with the dropdown lists which appear in an odd position. It’ll be sorted out as soon as I find out why it does that.
  • - When you select a folder (for a project or the workspaces) the shown path on the left doesn’t update. The new selected path is correct though. To be fixed soon.
  • - The result of the synchronizations doesn’t necessarily reflect automatically in Adobe Flash Builder and/or Adobe Flash Catalyst. This is a problem specific to both softwares, not CatalystBuilderSync. You can activate the Refresh automatically property but that won’t work every time. So don’t forget to sometimes refresh manually when swapping applications.
    Remember    : CatalystBuilderSync is here to simplify the workflow but we are still dealing with beta applications.
  • - I’m sure you’ll add plenty of other issues in the comments… (don’t throw stones at me please…)

Release Notes

Version 0.6.2:

  • - First public alpha version.

Feedback would be most definitely appreciated (I just pray and hope you won’t totally break it in 5 minutes…)