Is Flex built on Java?

[Jane Somerfield]

The UI components of Flex look similar to those of Swing. Are the Flex or Flash built on Java?

[Gregg Bolinger]

Um, yes and no. Flex generates Flash which is...Flash, not java. However, the Flex compiler which does the conversion from the MXML and AS3 code to SWF files is done using Java.

[Jane Somerfield]

So mxmlc uses Java.

[Gregg Bolinger]

On linux mxmlc is just a shell script which eventually does this:

java $VMARGS -jar "$FLEX_HOME/lib/mxmlc.jar" +flexlib="$FLEX_HOME/frameworks" "$@"

In Windows there is an mxmlc.exe but it does the exact same thing. The description of mxmlc.exe even says "Jar Launcher".