Adobe open sources Flash C++ compiler

Adobe has open sourced its Flash C++ compiler, FlasCC. An open source version of the tool is now hosted as part of the CrossBridge project on GitHub; previously, FlasCC was part of Adobe's Creative Cloud product. Adobe is hoping that the move to open source will deliver faster development and plenty of innovation from an active community. The software company has said it will itself remain actively involved in the development of the code as part of CrossBridge.

In October 2012, FlasCC emerged from the Alchemy project, which was developed as a compilation toolchain for C and C++ code, aimed at making it easier for C and C++ programmers to port their applications to Flash Player or AIR applications. A further objective for Alchemy was to provide operating-system-independent C and C++ libraries for web applications. Key areas of use are expected to include games written in C and C++, as well as audio and video encoding, XML parsing, and cryptography.

The newly released version 1.0.1 adds a few minor improvements to FlasCC 1.0, but is otherwise unchanged. The project will also encompass work undertaken for FlasCC 1.1, including changes to LLVM and Clang to enable them to better support C++ syntax. The source code for CrossBridge is available on GitHub.

(fab)