If you haven’t heard about the next version of Flex , code name Gumbo is now in development. According to Adobe’s Open Source site , the next version of Flex has 3 primary themes :

• Design in Mind: provide a framework meant for continuous collaboration between designer and developer.
• Developer Productivity: improve compiler performance and add productivity enhancements to language features like data binding
• Framework Evolution: take advantage of new Flash Player capabilities and add features required by common use-cases

Here’s instructions on how to use Gumbo SDK in your Flex Builder 3.

1. First you will need to download the lastest Gumbo SDK nightly build from opensource.adobe.com. Once you downloaded the zip file you will need to extract them to your hard drive.
2. You will also need Flash Player version 10 , download it from Adobe.com or click here for Flash Player 10.
3. Put the newly extracted folder in flex builders sdk directory , which would be in C:\Program Files\Adobe\Flex Builder 3\sdks ( this would be your default installation folder it will different if you changed it ).
4. Now we need to configure your Flex Builder 3 in order to use this SDK. Launch Flex Builder and then goto Window -> Preference and you should see the window below.


Flex Builder 3 Preference Window

5. Now click “Add” and browse into your Flex SDK directory and select the folder where your Flex Gumbo SDK is located and Flex Builder should be able to retrieve the SDK name by itself. Click the “OK” button. I would suggest keeping the old Flex 3 SDK as the default SDK and choose the Flex Gumbo SDK each time you need to use it.
6. Now that we have Flex Gumbo SDK availabe in your Flex Builder let’s create new project to use it. In Flex Builder 3 , click on “New Project” to create a new project and after the project is created goto the project properties by right clicking on the project in the Flex Navigator Tab and then click “Properties”. In the “Properties” dialog click on “Flex Compiler” and select “Use a specific SDK”  , here you should select the Gumbo SDK that you have installed as your sdk and change the “Require Flash Version” to 10.0.0.


Flex Builder 3 Project Properties

7. That’s it , you should now be able to debug/compile your Flex project with Flex Gumbo SDK with Flash 10 features.