Question

I’m looking for a way to collect the file dependencies from Flex ActionScript and MXML files. I was hoping that mxmlc could spit them out (like gcc’s -M option), but its option list doesn’t seem to have anything relevant. I could write a parser, but would prefer not to reinvent the wheel if it has already been done, particularly given the two very different languages involved. In particular, star imports and in-package implicit imports could be troublesome.

Is there a program available to do this for me?

Answer 1

The -link-report option of mxmlc produces a file containing most of the appropriate information, except that it reports fake file names for embedded assets, and ignores included source files. To collect everything, I now have the following in my makefile:

.deps/%.d: .deps/%.xml
    # $@: $<
    grep '<script name=./' $< | cut -f2 -d'"' | cut -f1 -d'(' | cut -f1 -d'$$' | sort -u  | sed -e "s|^$$(pwd)/||" > .deps/$*.f
    grep '\.mxml$$' .deps/$*.f | xargs grep -H 'mx:Script source' | sed -s 's|/[^/]*.mxml:.*source="\([^"]*\)".*|/\1|;' > .deps/$*.i
    for path in $$(grep -h '\.\(mxml\|as\|css\)$$' .deps/$*.[fi] | xargs grep '\bEmbed([^.)]' | \
        sed "s@\\(\\w\\+\\)/.*Embed([^'\")]*['\"][./]*\\([^'\"]*\\)['\"] *[,)].*@\\1/*/\\2@"); \
        do find */src -path "$$path"; done | sort -u > .deps/$*.e
    cat .deps/$*.[fie] | sed -e "s|^|$(flashpath)$*.swf $@ : |" > $@

# This includes targets, so should not be before the first target defined here.
built := $(wildcard .deps/*.xml)
include $(built:xml=d)

All of the mxmlc and compc commands in the makefile now have -link-report generating an appropriately-named .xml file in the .deps directory. I still have to search files for Embed and Script directives, but the hard part (determining which classes get included) has been done for me. I could use a real parser for each step, but grep, sed, and cut work well enough for the files as given.