Problem Adding Flex SDK in IDEA

…on a Mac or Linux.

I downloaded the latest Flex SDK from Adobe and simply unzipped the files in a directory on disk. I then entered module settings in IntelliJ IDEA and tried adding a new Flex SDK, simply by pointing IDEA at the unzipped directory. But, IDEA complained that “the selected directory is not a valid home for Flex SDK”. It took me a little while to discover what was wrong. The file permissions were wrong!

When unzipping the flex sdk zipfile download, the unix file permissions for group and other are cleared to 0, which means no permissions. This is a problem when unzipping with “sudo” (or as root) into /usr/local, and then running IDEA as another user, because that user cannot read the files and directories.

These two commands solve the problem, when executed in the unzipped Flex SDK directory:

sudo find . -type f -exec chmod go+r {} \;
sudo find . -type d -exec chmod go+r+x {} \;

they add read bit on all files for group and others and read and execute bit on all directories, again for group and others.
One last thing: I had to restart IDEA to make it see these changes (you might be able to simply click refresh in the file dialog).

January 30, 2009  Tags: ,   Posted in: Tools, Uncategorized

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