Here you can find hints and tips if you are having issues getting the AIR based SDK installer to work, as well as details of how to use the command-line to install the SDK using Ant without requiring AIR.

If you had installed a previous (pre-release) version of the installer app, you will probably get an AIR error because of the mis-matched certificates. If you see such an error, you may need to uninstall the installer before continuing.

 

Ant-based installer

The Ant-based installer doesn't require AIR to be installed, or use the installer app, and is the preferred method of install on Linux.

Download the binary package from http://flex.apache.org/download-binaries.html and unpack it. To test pre-release versions use the latest file from http://apacheflexbuild.cloudapp.net:8080/job/flex-sdk_release-candidate/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/out/

wget https://builds.apache.org/job/flex-sdk_release/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/out/apache-flex-sdk-4.12.0-bin.tar.gz

tar zxvf apache-flex-sdk-4.12.0-bin.tar.gz

Now enter the unpacked directory and run the installer. You will need to tell it to download the last version of the AIR SDK that ran on Linux. You can leave this argument off on other platforms.

cd apache-flex-sdk-4.12.0-bin/

ant -f installer.xml -Dair.sdk.version=2.6

You will be asked to agree to all the licence terms.

Now you just need to create folders to hold the player global file, and download the expected version. Older versions have URLs like http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/installers/archive/playerglobal/playerglobal10_2.swc.

mkdir -p frameworks/libs/player/11.1/

wget http://download.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/updaters/11/playerglobal11_1.swc -O frameworks/libs/player/11.1/playerglobal.swc

And finally verify that the Apache Flex compiler runs.

bin/mxmlc

You should see output like

Loading configuration file.........apache-flex-sdk-4.12.0-bin/frameworks/flex-config.xml

Apache Flex Compiler (mxmlc)

Version 4.12.0 build 2014-01-30_14-25-53

Copyright 2013 The Apache Software Foundation.

Error: a target file must be specified

Use 'mxmlc -help' for information about using the command line.

AIR-based installer on Mac OS (10.9 or later)

You must allow unsigned apps (in Security & Privacy pane of the System preferences) in order to install. In recent versions of OS X, this became a blocking error instead of a warning by default. This preference setting allows to revert it to a warning, non-blocking message.

AIR-based installer on Linux

Adobe no longer provide updates for their installer for the AIR runtime used by the installer, so clicking the installer badge may give an error, or the package it sends you will fail to correctly install. Workarounds to install the AIR runtime are listed below, or (as of Apache Flex 4.12 nightly) you can use the Ant-based method.

Install AIR on Debian based distributions (such as Ubuntu)

The following steps have been automated via a script on http://www.noobslab.com/2015/05/adobeair-is-now-available-for-ubuntu.html that also makes sure all the dependencies are installed.

If you need to use a version of Ubuntu not supported there, or Debian iteself, these are the manual steps.

For 32bit systems

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libgnome-keyring.so.0 /usr/lib/libgnome-keyring.so.0
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libgnome-keyring.so.0.2.0 /usr/lib/libgnome-keyring.so.0.2.0

For 64bit systems

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgnome-keyring.so.0 /usr/lib/libgnome-keyring.so.0
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgnome-keyring.so.0.2.0 /usr/lib/libgnome-keyring.so.0.2.0

Then for either system:
download the Adobe AIR installer by running the following command:

wget http://airdownload.adobe.com/air/lin/download/latest/AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

Once downloaded, you need to add "execute" permission to the installer:

sudo chmod +x AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

The last thing to do is executing the Adobe AIR installer:

sudo ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

If this fails with 'execvp: Permission denied' it may be because your /tmp files are not executable. You can change this until you reboot by doing 'sudo mount /tmp -o remount,exec,suid'.

Confirm the installer is installed once it completes by running

dpkg -l|grep adobeair

should list 'ii adobeair 1:2.6.0.19170 i386 Adobe AIR 2'. You can now click the installer on the main download page and it should work fine.

(thanks to http://www.ubuntubuzz.com/2012/08/how-to-install-adobe-air-on-ubuntu-1204.html)

Install AIR on Fedora and other .rpm based system (such as CentOS)

Currently .rpm's of the installer are not available.

Follow the instructions above to install the AIR runtime, then there has been some success reported using alien to convert the .deb package and install that. You will find the installer in /opt if all went well.