Porting an Adobe AIR app to BlackBerry 10

Earlier in the week, we told you how BlackBerry will be dropping support for Adobe AIR Runtime in OS 10.3. While this may affect a minority of developers, if you develop apps using Adobe AIR, you can repackage your existing BlackBerry 10 Adobe AIR apps as Android apps, and port them to BlackBerry 10. You can use the BlackBerry Runtime for Android apps on BlackBerry 10 OS version 10.2.1 or later.

There are two easy ways you can do this.

Exporting a release build with FDT

To use the FDT IDE to convert your Adobe AIR app into an .apk file:

1. Open your app in the FDT IDE.
2. On the main menu, choose Project > Properties
3. In the Properties dialog box, from the left navigation menu, select Android.
4. Select the Build tab.
5. Select or create your application descriptor file, and your app’s SWF file.
6. Select the Deploy tab.
7. In the Application Store setting section, select the radio button for Export application with captive runtime.
8. In the Export Application section, set the Deploy Location field. This is the path to where you want to save the .apk file that’s created.
9. Click the Export Application button.
10. Click OK to close the dialog box.

When FDT has finished compiling and repackaging your application as an .apk file, a dialog box is displayed telling you that the operation was successful.

Exporting a release build with Adobe Flash Builder

To use the Adobe Flash Builder to convert your Adobe AIR app into an .apk file:

1. Open your app in Adobe Flash Builder.
2. On the main menu, choose Project > Export Release Build.
3. In the Export Release Build dialog box, in the Export section, use the Browse button to select a folder where you want to save the resulting .apk file.
4. Click Next.
5. On the Deployment tab, under Export Options, select Export application with captive runtime.
6. Set any required items in each of the other tabs.
7. Click Finish to create your new .apk file.

Don’t forget that before you can submit your app to BlackBerry World, the .apk file must be repackaged as a BlackBerry 10 OS compatible .bar file.

Notes

When you resubmit your app to the BlackBerry World vendor portal, set the value of the minimum supported OS to 10.2.1.

If your application uses Adobe AIR 3.7 and Adobe Flex 4.5 or earlier, you must include the captive runtime in your app. As of Adobe AIR 3.8 and Adobe Flex 4.6, the Adobe AIR captive runtime is packaged in the APK file by default.[signoff predefined=”Enjoy this?” icon=”icon-users”][/signoff]