Adding plugins to Flex Builder 3

OK, so this isn’t rocket science, but I thought I’d just update other Flex developers who may be using the Standalone version of Flex Builder 3 and who haven’t added other eclipse plugins.

Say you want to add PHP support (PHP projects and files) to Eclipse. It’s as simple as 1,2,3

1. Download the Eclipse plugin you want and extract to some temp directory.
2. In Flex Builder goto Help -> Software Updates -> Find and Install -> Search for New Features -> New Local Site, and point to the folder that you extracted the plugin to.
3. Follow the prompts and restart Flex Builder.

So, it’s pretty trivial, but I thought I’d heads up the community as I hadn’t seen anything out there about trying this.

One thing to note however, after you create a new PHP project, the “New” menu switches to PHP items as expected. However, when you close a PHP project and go back to a Flex one, the New menu doesn’t switch back. This is just the Perspective. It’s toggled to PHP. You’ll need to switch it back manually to Flex Development (you can see the tab in the top right of Eclipse).

FYI – there’s all sorts of plugins available from Eclipse sites. Try Help -> Software Updates -> Find and Install -> Search for New Features and see what’s there. You’ll probably find you’ll have to “Select Required Items” as many plugins rely on other basic ones.