AIR Developer Tool (ADT)

The AIR Developer Tool (ADT) is a multi-purpose, command-line tool for developing AIR applications. You can use ADT to perform the following tasks:

  • Package an AIR application as an .air installation file

  • Package an AIR application as a native installer—for example, as a .exe installer file on Windows, .rpm or .deb on Linux, or .apk on Android

  • Package an AIR Native Extension (ANE)

  • Sign an AIR application with a digital certificate

  • Change (migrate) the digital signature used for application updates

  • Create a self-signed digital code signing certificate

  • Remotely install, launch, and uninstall an application on a mobile device

  • Remotely install and uninstall the AIR runtime on a mobile device

ADT is a Java program included in the AIR SDK. You must have Java 1.5 or higher to use it. The SDK includes a script file for invoking ADT. To use this script, the location of the Java program must be included in the path environment variable. If the AIR SDK bin directory is also listed in your path environment variable, you can type adt on the command line, with the appropriate arguments, to invoke ADT. (If you do not know how to set your path environment variable, please refer to your operating system documentation. As a further aid, procedures for setting the path on most computer systems are described in Path environment variables.)

Assuming both Java and the AIR SDK bin directory are both included in the path variable, you can run ADT using the following basic syntax:

adt -commandoptions
Note: Most integrated development environments, including Adobe Flash Builder, Adobe Flash Professional, and Aptana Studio can package and sign AIR applications for you. You typically do not need to use ADT for these common tasks when you already use such a development environment. However, you might still need to use ADT as a command-line tool for functions that are not supported by your integrated development environment. In addition, you can use ADT as a command-line tool as part of an automated build process.