Flash Builder + Flex 4.5 + unit tests = Unknown error generating output application.xml files

[Guest]

I have been running into a problem with Flash Builder when it comes to executing my unit tests for Flex 4.5 applications. Almost every time I try to launch the unit tests, Flash Builder errors with the following message:

Unknown error generating output application.xml files. Check the Eclipse error log for more details.

Looking at FlexUnitApplication-app.xml reveals the following (stripped unreleated bits to make the issue more apparent):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="no"?>
<application xmlns="http://ns.adobe.com/air/application/2.6">
     <initialWindow>
          <!-- The main SWF or HTML file of the application. Required. -->
          <!-- Note: In Flash Builder, the SWF reference is set automatically. -->
          <content>[This value will be overwritten by Flash Builder in the output app.xml]</content>

The square brackets in the <content> node seem to cause Flash Builder (or one of the executables it calls out to) difficulty when parsing the XML. Manually editing the XML to remove the square brackets and then re-launching often works (though sometimes I have to repeat this loop once or twice before it does work).

Any idea what's causing this?

[Sudhir_T_S]

Hi Brian,

The text between the content tags get overwritten when running flexUnit tests.

Can you confirm if the FlexUnitApplication-App.xml snippet that you have quoted is picked from the app.xml file bin-debug folder? Ideally the app.xml file in your bin-debug folder should have this in the form of

<content>FlexUnitApplication.swf</content> with the placeholder replaced with flexunit app swf name.

-Sudhir

[Guest]

Good question. The app XML file I was referring to was the one in the source folder. It seems that Flash Builder (or something else, hard to say) is having trouble parsing the brackets and so it's preventing the test app from launching.

I just told my project to "Execute FlexUnit Tests" again to repro the problem to verify.

/src/FlexUnitApplication-app.xml

• Contains <content>[...]</content>
• Shows a modification date of 9:04 am (now)

/bin-debug/FlexUnitApplication-app.xml

• Contains <content>FlexUnitApplication.swf</content>
• Shows a modification date of yesterday (when I last successfully ran the tests)

I'm unclear why Flash Builder is modifying this file (in the source folder) at all. Should the app XMLs be read-only configurations?

[Sudhir_T_S]

Thats strange. Can you try manually deleting your contents in your bin-debug folder and doing a clean build of your project. If the trick still does not solve your problem, can you please mail your project to my id sudhirs (at) adobe (dot) com to help us investigate this further?

Can you also post the complete error log here?

Thanks,

Sudhir

[Guest]

Surprisingly enough (to me) manually deleting the "bin-debug" folder's contents and running Project->Clean seems to have supressed this issue. Weird!

I'll post here if it comes back up. Thanks for your quick help though, Sudhir!

[Guest]

Unfortunately, this has started happening again (same project). I am not 100% positive, but I believe it started happening after I made an edit to a local Flex Library that I was linking to.

[Sudhir_T_S]

Hi Brian,

Is it the same parse error that you are getting again? Are you using a plugin version or standalone FB?

[Guest]

Yup, this is the same error as before.

I'm running OS X (10.6.7) with Flash Builder installed as a plug-in, running within my Eclipse 3.5.2 carbon.

In Eclipse's Plug-ins panel it shows Flash Builder's version as 4.0.0.272416

[Sudhir_T_S]

I guess the problem is, you are using 4.5 SDK with FB 4.0 FlexUnit tooling support, which might not work. FB 4.0 FU tooling would support SDK 4.0 and versions prior to it.You need to either revert your project to 4.0 SDK or do a clean build everytime you change your library project.

[Guest]

I will be happy to upgrade to Flash Builder 4.5, if this is the cause of my troubles.

But I'd like to verify- did you notice my comment about experiencing this same problem for Flex 4.1 projects as well? (That may not change your answer, since 4.1 is still > 4.0 but I'd like to verify.)

It seems a shame that the 4.0 FB is capable of running 4.5 Flex Unit tests without any problems aside from this race condition. Feels a bit unfortunate to have to upgrade to get around an issue like this.

[Sudhir_T_S]

FB 4.0 FU tooling might still not work with SDK 4.1 for the same reason. Ugrading to FB 4.5 will definitely solve this problem if running flexUnit test cases with Flex 4.5 or 4.1 is your requirement.