About the application compiler options

Enables accessibility features when compiling the application or SWC file. The default value is false.

For more information on using the Flex accessibility features, see Accessible applications.

Sets the file encoding for ActionScript files.

For more information, see Setting the file encoding.

Lists advanced help options when used with the help option, as the following example shows:

mxmlc -help advanced

This is an advanced option.

Checks if a source-path entry is a subdirectory of another source-path entry. It helps make the package names of MXML components unambiguous.

This is an advanced option.

Use the ActionScript 3.0 class-based object model for greater performance and better error reporting. In the class-based object model, most built-in functions are implemented as fixed methods of classes.

The default value is true. If you set this value to false, you must set the es option to true.

This is an advanced option.

Prints detailed compile times to the standard output. The default value is true.

compress=true|false

Enables or disables SWF file compression.

The default value is true when debugging is disabled (so that release SWF files are compressed) and false when debugging is enabled (so that debug SWF files are not compressed).

Sets the value of the {context.root} token, which is often used in channel definitions in the flex-services.xml file and other settings in the flex-config.xml file. The default value is null.

Sets metadata in the resulting SWF file. For more information, see Adding metadata to SWF files.

Sets metadata in the resulting SWF file. For more information, see Adding metadata to SWF files.

Sets metadata in the resulting SWF file. For more information, see Adding metadata to SWF files.

Generates a debug SWF file. This file includes line numbers and filenames of all the source files. When a run-time error occurs, the stacktrace shows these line numbers and filenames. This information is used by the command-line debugger and the Flex Builder debugger. Enabling the debug option generates larger SWF files and also disables compilation optimization.

For the mxmlc compiler, the default value is false. For the compc compiler, the default value is true.

For Flash Builder, the default value is true. If you export an application by using the Export Release Build feature, the Flash Builder compiler excludes the debugging information, which is the equivalent of setting the value of this option to false.

When generating SWC files, if debug is set to true, then the library.swf file inside the SWC file contains debug information. If you are generating a SWC file for distribution, set this value to false.

For information about the command-line debugger, see Command-line debugger.

If you set this option to true, Flex also sets the verbose-stacktraces option to true

Lets you engage in remote debugging sessions with the Flash IDE.

This is an advanced option.

Sets the application’s frame rate. The default value is 24.

This is an advanced option.

Defines the application’s script execution limits.

The max-recursion-depth value specifies the maximum depth of Adobe Flash Player call stack before Flash Player stops. This is essentially the stack overflow limit. The default value is 1000.

The max-execution-time value specifies the maximum duration, in seconds, that an ActionScript event handler can execute before Flash Player assumes that it is hung, and aborts it. The default value is 60 seconds. You cannot set this value above 60 seconds.

You can override these settings in the application.

This is an advanced option.

Defines the default application size, in pixels.

This is an advanced option.

Inserts CSS files into the output the same way that a per-SWC defaults.css file works, but without having to re-archive the SWC file to test each change.

CSS files included in the output with this option have a higher precedence than default CSS files in existing SWCs. For example, a CSS file included with this option overrides definitions in framework.swc’s defaults.css file, but it has the same overall precedence as other included CSS files inside the SWC file.

This option does not actually insert the CSS file into the SWC file; it simulates it. When you finish developing the CSS file, you should rebuild the SWC file with the new integrated CSS file.

This option takes one or more files. The precedence for multiple CSS files included with this option is from first to last.

This is an advanced option.

Defines the location of the default style sheet. Setting this option overrides the implicit use of the defaults.css style sheet in the framework.swc file.

For more information on the defaults.css file, see Styles and themes.

This is an advanced option.

Defines a global constant. The value is evaluated at compile time and exists as a constant within the application. A common use of inline constants is to set values that are used to include or exclude blocks of code, such as debugging or instrumentation code. This is known as conditional compilation.

The following example defines the constant debugging in the CONFIG namespace:

-define=CONFIG::debugging,true

In ActionScript, you can use this value to conditionalize statements; for example:

CONFIG::debugging {// Execute debugging code here.}

To set multiple conditionals on the command-line, use the define option more than once.

For more information, see Using conditional compilation.

Sets metadata in the resulting SWF file. For more information, see Adding metadata to SWF files.

Outputs the compiler options in the flex-config.xml file to the target path; for example:

mxmlc -dump-config myapp-config.xml

This is an advanced option.

Instructs the compiler to use the ECMAScript edition 3 prototype-based object model to allow dynamic overriding of prototype properties. In the prototype-based object model, built-in functions are implemented as dynamic properties of prototype objects.

The default value is false.

Using the ECMAScript edition 3 prototype-based object model lets you use untyped properties and functions in your application code. As a result, if you set the value of the es compiler option to true, you must set the strict compiler option to false. Otherwise, the compiler will throw errors.

If you set this option to true, you must also set the value of the as3 compiler option to false.

This is an advanced option.

Sets a list of classes to exclude from linking when compiling a SWF file.

This option provides compile-time link checking for external references that are dynamically linked.

For more information about dynamic linking, see About linking.

This is an advanced option.

Specifies a list of SWC files or directories to exclude from linking when compiling a SWF file. This option provides compile-time link checking for external components that are dynamically linked.

By default, the libs/player/playerglobal.swc file is linked as an external library. This library is built into Flash Player.

For more information about dynamic linking, see About linking.

You can use the += operator to append the new SWC file to the list of external libraries.

Sets the default value that determines whether embedded fonts use advanced anti-aliasing information when rendering the font.

Setting the value of the advanced-anti-aliasing property in a style sheet overrides this value.

The default value is false.

For more information about using advanced anti-aliasing, see Fonts.

Specifies the range of Unicode settings for that language. For more information, see Fonts.

This is an advanced option.

Sets the location of the local font snapshot file. The file contains system font data.

This is an advanced option.

Defines the font manager. The default is flash.fonts.JREFontManager. You can also use the flash.fonts.BatikFontManager. For more information, see Fonts.

This is an advanced option.

Sets the maximum number of fonts to keep in the server cache.

Sets the maximum number of character glyph-outlines to keep in the server cache for each font face.

This is an advanced option.

-frame=MyLabel,Class1,Class2

This option lets you add asset factories that stream in after the application that then publish their interfaces with the ModuleManager class. The advantage to doing this is that the application starts faster than it would have if the assets had been included in the code, but does not require moving the assets to an external SWF file.

This is an advanced option.

Toggles the generation of an IFlexBootstrap-derived loader class.

This is an advanced option.

Enables the headless implementation of the Flex compiler. This sets the following:

System.setProperty("java.awt.headless", "true")

The headless setting (java.awt.headless=true) is required to use fonts and SVG on UNIX systems without X Windows.

This is an advanced option.

help -list advanced

For more information, see Command-line syntax.

include-inheritance-dependencies-only=false|true

Include only classes that are inheritance dependencies of classes that are included with the include-classes compiler option.

The default value is false.

compc -include-classes mx.collections.ListCollectionView 
-include-inheritance-dependencies-only=true 
-source-path . -output lcv2 -directory

Links all classes inside a SWC file to the resulting application SWF file, regardless of whether or not they are used.

Contrast this option with the library-path option that includes only those classes that are referenced at compile time.

To link one or more classes whether or not they are used and not an entire SWC file, use the includes option.

This option is commonly used to specify resource bundles.

Specifies the resource bundles to link into a resource module. All resource bundles specified with this option must be in the compiler’s source path. You specify this using the source-path compiler option.

For more information on using resource bundles, see Resource Bundles.

Links one or more classes to the resulting application SWF file, whether or not those classes are required at compile time.

To link an entire SWC file rather than individual classes, use the include-libraries option.

Enables incremental compilation. For more information, see About incremental compilation.

This option is true by default for the Flash Builder application compiler. For the command-line compiler, the default is false.

isolate-styles=true|false

Enables per-module styling.

The default value is true.

This is an advanced option. You typically only use this option if you want to set styles in a module that is loaded into your main application. For more information about modules, see Modular applications.

Specifies custom metadata that you want to keep. By default, the compiler keeps the following metadata:

If you want to preserve the default metadata, you should use the += operator to append your custom metadata, rather than the = operator which replaces the default metadata.

This is an advanced option. For more information, see About metadata tags.

keep-all-type-selectors=true|false

Instructs the compiler to keep a style sheet’s type selector in a SWF file, even if that type (the class) is not used in the application. This is useful when you have a modular application that loads other applications. For example, the loading SWF file might define a type selector for a type used in the loaded (or, target) SWF file. If you set this option to true when compiling the loading SWF file, then the target SWF file will have access to that type selector when it is loaded. If you set this option to false, the compiler will not include that type selector in the loading SWF file at compile time. As a result, the styles will not be available to the target SWF file.

This is an advanced option.

Determines whether to keep the generated ActionScript class files.

The generated class files include stubs and classes that are generated by the compiler and used to build the SWF file.

When using the application compiler, the default location of the files is the /generated subdirectory, which is directly below the target MXML file. If the /generated directory does not exist, the compiler creates one. When using the compc component compiler, the default location of the /generated directory is relative to the output of the SWC file. When using Flash Builder, the default location of the generated files is the /bin/generated directory.

The default names of the primary generated class files are filename-generated.as and filename-interface.as.

The default value is false.

This is an advanced option.

Sets metadata in the resulting SWF file. For more information, see Adding metadata to SWF files.

Links SWC files to the resulting application SWF file. The compiler only links in those classes for the SWC file that are required. You can specify a directory or individual SWC files.

The default value of the library-path option includes all SWC files in the libs and libs/player directories, plus the current locale directory. These are required.

To point to individual classes or packages rather than entire SWC files, use the source-path option.

If you set the value of the library-path as an option of the command-line compiler, you must also explicitly add the framework.swc and locale SWC files. Your new entry is not appended to the library-path but replaces it, unless you use the += operator.

On the command line, you use the += operator to append the new argument to the list of existing SWC files.

In a configuration file, you can set the append attribute of the library-path tag to true to indicate that the values should be appended to the library path rather than replace existing default entries.

Defines the license key to use when compiling.

Prints linking information to the specified output file. This file is an XML file that contains <def>, <pre>, and <ext> symbols showing linker dependencies in the final SWF file.

The output of this command can be used as input to the load-externs option.

For more information on the report, see Examining linker dependencies.

This is an advanced option.

Specifies the location of the configuration file that defines compiler options.

If you specify a configuration file, you can override individual options by setting them on the command line.

All relative paths in the configuration file are relative to the location of the configuration file itself.

Use the += operator to chain this configuration file to other configuration files.

For more information on using configuration files to provide options to the command-line compilers, see About configuration files.

Specifies the location of an XML file that contains <def>, <pre>, and <ext> symbols to omit from linking when compiling a SWF file. The XML file uses the same syntax as the one produced by the link-report option. For more information on the report, see Examining linker dependencies.

This option provides compile-time link checking for external components that are dynamically linked.

For more information about dynamic linking, see About linking.

This is an advanced option.

Specifies one or more locales to be compiled into the SWF file. If you do not specify a locale, then the compiler uses the default locale from the flex-config.xml file. The default value is en_US. You can append additional locales to the default locale by using the += operator.

If you remove the default locale from the flex-config.xml file, and do not specify one on the command line, then the compiler will use the machine’s locale.

For more information, see Localization.

Sets metadata in the resulting SWF file. For more information, see Adding metadata to SWF files.

Sets metadata in the resulting SWF file. For more information, see Adding metadata to SWF files.

Specifies the version of the Flex compiler that the output should be compatible with. This option affects some behavior such as the layout rules, padding and gaps, skins, and other style settings. In addition, it affects the rules for parsing properties files.

The following example instructs the application to compile with the Flex 3 rules for these behaviors:

-compatibility-version=3.0.0

Possible values for this compiler option are defined as constants in the FlexVersion class.

If you set this value to 3.0.0, you must also use a theme in your application that is compatible with version 3 of the SDK.

For more information on using this option, see Backward compatibility.

mxml.minimum-supported-version=version_number

Specifies the minimum version of the SDK that the application uses. This is typically used when generating SWC files.

This is an advanced option.

mxml.qualified-type-selectors=true|false

Determines whether you want the compiler to ensure that type selectors have a qualified namespace in the CSS files.

This is an advanced option. The default value is true.

Specifies a namespace for the MXML file. You must include a URI and the location of the manifest file that defines the contents of this namespace. This path is relative to the MXML file.

For more information about manifest files, see About manifest files.

Enables the ActionScript optimizer. This optimizer reduces file size and increases performance by optimizing the SWF file’s bytecode.

The default value is true.

omit-trace-statements=false|true

Enables trace() statements from being written to the flashlog.txt file.

The default value is false, which means that by default, trace() statements are written to the flashlog.txt file.

Specifies the output path and filename for the resulting file. If you omit this option, the compiler saves the SWF file to the directory where the target file is located.

The default SWF filename matches the target filename, but with a SWF file extension.

If you use a relative path to define the filename, it is always relative to the current working directory, not the target MXML application root.

The compiler creates extra directories based on the specified filename if those directories are not present.

When using this option with the component compiler, the output is a SWC file rather than a SWF file, unless you set the directory option to true. In that case, the output is a directory with the contents of the SWC file. The name of the directory is that value of the ouput option.

preloader class_name

Specify a download progress bar for your application. The value must be the name of a class that implements the IPreloaderDisplay interface.

The default value is “mx.preloaders.SparkDownloadProgressBar” when compatibility-version is 4.0.0 or greater. When compatibility-version is less than 4.0.0, the default value is “mx.preloaders.DownloadProgressBar”.

For more information, see Showing the download progress of an application.

Sets metadata in the resulting SWF file. For more information, see Adding metadata to SWF files.

Defines the metadata for the resulting SWF file. The value of this option overrides any metadata-related compiler options such as contributor, creator, date, and description.

This is an advanced option.

remove-unused-rsls=true|false

Instructs the compiler to only include RSLs that are used by the application. The default value is true.

For more information about RSLs, see Runtime Shared Libraries.

Prints a list of resource bundles that are used by the current application to a file named with the filename argument. You then use this list as input that you specify with the include-resource-bundles option to create a resource module.

For more information, see Resource Bundles.

Specifies a list of runtime shared libraries (RSLs) to use for this application. RSLs are dynamically-linked at run time. The compiler externalizes the contents of the application that you are compiling that overlap with the RSL.

You specify the location of the SWF file relative to the deployment location of the application. For example, if you store a file named library.swf file in the web_root/libraries directory on the web server, and the application in the web root, you specify libraries/library.swf.

This compiler argument is included for backwards compatibility with Flex 3 applications. For Flex 4 applications, use the runtime-shared-library-path option.

For more information about RSLs, see Runtime Shared Libraries.

Specifies the location of a runtime shared library (RSL). The compiler externalizes the contents of the application that you are compiling that overlap with the RSL.

The path-element argument is the location of the SWC file or open directory to compile against. For example, c:\flexsdk\frameworks\libs\framework.swc. This is the equivalent of the using the external-library-path option when compiling against an RSL using the runtime-shared-libraries option.

The rsl-url argument is the URL of the RSL that will be used to load the RSL at runtime. The compiler does not verify the existence of the SWF file at this location at compile time. It does store this string in the application, however, and uses it at run time. As a result, the SWF file must be available at run time but necessarily not at compile time.

The policy-file-url is the location of the crossdomain.xml file that gives permission to read the RSL from the server. This might be necessary because the RSL can be on a separate server as the application. For example, http://www.mydomain.com/rsls/crossdomain.xml.

The failover-url and second policy-file-url arguments specify the location of the secondary RSL and crossdomain.xml file if the first RSL cannot be loaded. This most commonly happens when the client Player version does not support cross-domain RSLs. You can add any number of failover RSLs, but must include a policy file URL for each one.

Do not include spaces between the comma-separated values. The following example shows how to use this option:

mxmlc -o=../lib/app.swf -runtime-shared-library-path=../lib/mylib.swc,../bin/myrsl.swf Main.mxml

You can specify more than one library file to be used as an RSL. You do this by adding additional runtime-shared-library-path options.

You can also use the runtime-shared-libraries command to use RSLs with your applications. However, the runtime-shared-library-path option lets you also specify the location of the policy file and failover RSL.

For more information about RSLs, see Runtime Shared Libraries.

runtime-shared-library-settings.application-domain=path-element,application-domain-target

Controls which domain an RSL is loaded into at runtime.

The path-element is the path of the SWC library. To specify an RSL with this option, you must also define it in the runtime-shared-library-path option.

The application-domain-target is the domain that the RSL should be loaded into. Valid values for application-domain-target are default, current, parent, and top-level. The default value is default.

For more information about modules, see Modular applications. For more information about sub-applications, see Developing and loading sub-applications.

For more information about RSLs, see Runtime Shared Libraries.

runtime-shared-library-settings.force-rsls=path-element

Forces an RSL to be included, regardless of whether it is used by the application. This is useful if all the links to a particular class in an RSL are soft references, or if you anticipate a module or sub-application to need a class that is not used by the main application.

The path-element is the path of the SWC library. You can specify more than one path-element by using a comma-delimited list of RSLs. To specify an RSL with this option, you must also define it in the runtime-shared-library-path option.

For more information about RSLs, see Runtime Shared Libraries.

Specifies the location of the services-config.xml file. This file is used by LiveCycle Data Services ES.

Shows warnings for ActionScript classes.

The default value is true.

For more information about viewing warnings and errors, see Viewing warnings and errors.

Shows a warning when Flash Player cannot detect changes to a bound property.

The default value is true.

For more information about viewing warnings and errors, see Viewing warnings and errors.

show-invalid-css-property-warnings=true|false

Shows a warning when a style property is set in CSS on a component that does not support that property. The warning can be a result of the theme not supporting the style property, the component not declaring it, or the component excluding it.

The default value is true.

For more information about viewing warnings and errors, see Viewing warnings and errors.

Shows warnings when you try to embed a font with a family name that is the same as the operating system font name. The compiler normally warns you that you are shadowing a system font. Set this option to false to disable the warnings.

The default value is true.

For more information about viewing warnings and errors, see Viewing warnings and errors.

Shows warnings when a type selector in a style sheet or <fx:Style> block is not used by any components in the application.

The default value is true.

This warning does not detect whether a condition is met for descendant selectors.

For more information about viewing warnings and errors, see Viewing warnings and errors.

size-report=filename

Creates a report that summarizes the size of each type of data within an application SWF file. Types of data include media files, fonts, shapes, and ActionScript.

mxmlc -size-report=myreport.xml MyApp.mxml

The file format of the output is XML. While the format has some similarities to the output of the link-report option, the size report cannot be used as input to the load-externs option.

This option is useful if you are optimizing your application and want to see how big areas of your application are.

For more information about the size report, see Using the size report.

Adds directories or files to the source path. The Flex compiler searches directories in the source path for MXML, AS, or CSS source files that are used in your applications and includes those that are required at compile time.

You can use wildcards to include all files and subdirectories of a directory.

To link an entire library SWC file and not individual classes or directories, use the library-path option.

The source path is also used as the search path for the component compiler’s include-classes and include-resource-bundles options.

You can also use the += operator to append the new argument to the list of existing source path entries.

This option has the following default behavior:

Determines whether to compile against libraries statically or use RSLs. Set this option to true to ignore the RSLs specified by the runtime-shared-library-path option. Set this option to false to use the RSLs.

The default value is true.

This option is useful so that you can quickly switch between a statically and dynamically linked application without having to change the runtime-shared-library-path option, which can be verbose, or edit the configuration files.

For more information about RSLs, see Runtime Shared Libraries.

Prints undefined property and function calls; also performs compile-time type checking on assignments and options supplied to method calls.\

The default value is true.

For more information about viewing warnings and errors, see Viewing warnings and errors.

swf-version=int

Specifies the SWF file format version of the output SWF file. Features requiring a later version of the SWF file format are not compiled into the application. This is different from the Player version in that it refers to the SWF specification versioning scheme.

For Flex 4.6, the default value of swf-version is 14 (and the default Player version is 11.1).

This is an advanced option.

For more information, see Targeting Flash Player versions.

Specifies the version of Flash Player that you want to target with the application. Features requiring a later version of Flash Player are not compiled into the application.

The player_version parameter has the following format:

major_version.minor_version.revision

The major_version is required while minor_version and revision are optional. For Flex 4.0 and 4.1, the minimum value is 10.0.0. If you do not specify the minor_version or revision, then the compiler uses zeros. For Flex 4.5, the default value is 10.2.0. For Flex 4.6, the default value is 11.1.

If you do not explicitly set the value of this option, the compiler uses the default from the flex-config.xml file. The value in flex-config.xml is the version of Flash Player that shipped with the SDK.

This option is useful if your application’s audience has a specific Player and cannot upgrade. You can use this option to “downgrade” your application for that audience.

For more information, see Targeting Flash Player versions

Specifies a list of theme files to use with this application. Theme files can be SWC files with CSS files inside them or CSS files.

For information on compiling a SWC theme file, see Styles and themes.

Sets metadata in the resulting SWF file. For more information, see Adding metadata to SWF files.

tools-locale=locale

Specifies the locale to use when reporting compiler errors and warnings. Valid values are the language code (such as "ja" or "en") or the language code plus country code (such as "ja_JP" or "en_US"), depending on your system's configuration.

use-direct-blit=false|true

Specifies whether hardware acceleration is used to copy graphics to the screen (if such acceleration is available).

This option only applies to applications running in the standalone Flash Player. For applications running in a browser, setting use-direct-blit to true is equivalent to setting wmode to "direct" in the HTML wrapper. For AIR applications, use the renderMode application descriptor tag.

The default value is false.

This is an advanced option.

use-gpu=false|true

Specifies whether GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) acceleration is used when drawing graphics (if such acceleration is available).

This option only applies to applications running in the standalone Flash Player. For applications running in a browser, setting use-gpu to true is equivalent to setting wmode to "gpu" in the HTML wrapper. For AIR applications, use the renderMode application descriptor tag.

The default value is false.

This is an advanced option.

Specifies that the current application uses network services.

The default value is true.

When the use-network property is set to false, the application can access the local filesystem (for example, use the XML.load() method with file: URLs) but not network services. In most circumstances, the value of this property should be true.

For more information about the use-network property, see Security.

Enables resource bundles. Set to true to instruct the compiler to process the contents of the [ResourceBundle] metadata tag.

The default value is true.

For more information, see Resource Bundles.

This is an advanced option.

Generates source code that includes line numbers. When a run-time error occurs, the stacktrace shows these line numbers.

Enabling this option generates larger SWF files.

Enabling this option does not generate a debug SWF file. To do that, you must set the debug option to true.

The default value is false.

Instructs the application to check the digest of the RSL SWF file against the digest that was compiled into the application at compile time. This is a security measure that lets you load RSLs from remote domains or different sub-domains. It also lets you enforce versioning of your RSLs by forcing an application’s digest to match the RSL’s digest. If the digests are out of sync, you must recompile your application or load a different RSL SWF file.

For more information about RSLs, see Runtime Shared Libraries.

Returns the version number of the MXML compiler. If you are using a trial or Beta version of Flex, the version option also returns the number of days remaining in the trial period and the expiration date.

Enables specified warnings. For more information, see Viewing warnings and errors.

Enables all warnings. Set to false to disable all warnings. This option overrides the warn-warning_type options.

The default value is true.