Where to download old versions of the Adobe Flex SDK

If you’re maintaining a legacy project that will not compile or run correctly with the latest Apache Flex SDK, you may prefer to avoid overhauling the entire project simply to make some minor bug fixes. If you’d rather continue using the same Flex SDK that project was originally developed with, you’ll be asking yourself, “Where can I find old builds of the Adobe Flex SDK?” They’re not exactly easy to find.

Adobe helpfully provides Archived Flash Player versions and Archived AIR SDK versions on their website. However, I had some difficulty finding a similar archive for the Adobe Flex SDK. The most promising resource was the SourceForge Flex SDK Downloads, but all of the links point to a strange FlexLicense.swf on blogs.adobe.com that my browser asks me to download instead of running directly.

After searching for a while, I could only find direct links to a few specific versions of the Adobe Flex SDK, but most versions remained seemingly lost. Eventually, I returned to that weird FlexLicense.swf, and I gave it a try with the standalone Flash Player. Someone else posted that they couldn’t get it to run at all after downloading it (which is why I didn’t try it earlier), but it worked for me, and I took the time to select each version of the Adobe Flex SDK that it listed, and I was able to open a valid URL in my browser for every single one of them.

In order to keep my fellow developers from going through the same hassle, I compiled the following list of legacy Adobe Flex SDK versions that are still available on Adobe’s servers at the time of this writing:

Hopefully, that helps another Flex developer with some legacy code to maintain.

About Josh Tynjala

Josh Tynjala is a frontend software developer, open source contributor, karaoke enthusiast, and he likes bowler hats. Josh develops Feathers UI, a user interface component library for creative apps, and he is a member of the OpenFL leadership team. One of his side projects is Logic.ly, a digital logic circuit simulator for education. You should follow Josh on Mastodon.

Discussion

  1. Will Mitchell

    This post was extremely helpful. Thank you. It wasn’t just a nice thing, it’s allowing us to help an organization avoid disruptions to their services as they transition off flash; services that people depend on.

    1. Josh Tynjala

      I don’t think that you can get a standalone version of the Flex 2 SDK. However, I seem to recall that it’s still possible to download Flex Builder 2. That will include the SDK. These pages on Adobe’s website look promising:

      https://www.adobe.com/support/flex/downloads_updaters.html#flex2
      https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/multi/flex-2-0-1-hotfix.html

      Do it fast! Adobe has been taking Flash/Flex stuff down, and I suspect that they’re going to take even more down with the actual Flash Player EOL. 2020 is almost over.

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