My SWC isn’t Compiling properly!

Had this quick gotcha the other day with flex builder and I thought I’d share – mainly for myself as I’ll no doubt forget this before too long.

I was working on a Flex Library Project.  Really cool you can work on classes in the Library project and as you save them they are compiled into a SWC file in the bin directory (as long as you have Build Automatically checked in the Project Menu, that’s another gotcha that drove me made for a bit when I turned it off as I was working on a large app and couldn’t be arsed to wait the 5 mins after each save whilst the compiler built the project.  Forgetting to turn it on or build the project gave me heartfailure when I launched the swf to test it was working.)  Anyway – back to Flex Library Projects generating SWCs.  Nice.  I can then share this, or just link to it and speed stuff up by using common code.

However I’d just added another folder and a few more classes to the Library project, saved them and then went off to the flex app I was building and started coding happily away.  Rather quickly I realised I wasn’t picking up the new classes I’d added to the SWC.  I checked in the Library Project, they were there.  I saved them again – thinking that sometimes maybe the SWC doesn’t compile.  I checked that Build Automatically was turned on (see above) it was.  I deleted the SWC and resaved the new classes.  Nothing happened.  Shit – I must have corrupeted somehow!  I decided to check on of the original classes – all fine, I saved it again and – hang on – there’s the SWC.  All compiled lovely.  Great!  Back to the flex app.

Nope – it still hasn’t compiled the new classes and packages into it and I have no access.  Right now I’m ready to throw the computer out of the window when I right click on the Library project, select Properties and then Flex Library Build Path.  Aha.  Even though I’ve added files and folders they ARE NOT added to the build path.  Click on them to select them, save – and there we go.  All sorted.

So long story short – if you’re compiling a swc using a Flex Library project and it’s missing packages and classes you know should be there, check the build path.

P.S.  I think I may be going bald with all the hair I’ve pulled out.