Adobe Alchemy Project

Another new release on the adobe labs site is the project called Alchemy. The purpose of this project is to allow developers to compile C and C++ code into Action Script.

The questions is why?

The answer is really quite simple and twofold. Performance and Reuse. There is a lot of C and C++ libraries out there that are use for cpu intensive tasks such as video and audio transcoding, data manipulation, cryptographic functions and physics simulations. These libraries would be much more performant than trying to rebuild the same functionality with AS3 (Action Script 3).

The ability to compile these libraries into Action Script will provide real benifits by providing a bridge between C/C++ and Action Scipt while ensuring that the Flash Player security protection remains in place.

It is not intended to let you can go and recompile a complete C++ application into a Flash application but more the ability to leverage existing C++ libraries within a Flash/Flex application.