External library for Flex app running as Flash Panel

I’m working on a Flex app at work that runs in the Flash authoring environment.

The usage/release schedule/workflow context of this app are complex enough that we need to externalize a particular category of view components. This category of components is a library of building blocks that are used to create interfaces at run time, based on an XML description, and needs to be updatable independent of the release schedule of the application.

This will allow us to add new building blocks to the library, which will then be available to be used via XML description, without having to release a new version of the main application.

Pretty basic use case for creating an external library.

The only real twist here is that the application is built in Flex, but is neither an AIR app nor a browser app – it runs in the Flash authoring environment’s runtime. This is not a huge twist, but sometimes the smallest twists hurt the most.

So, I’m checking out the different options – RSL, Module, straight up loading a SWF. Just found a post by Thibault Imbert (bytearray.org) that is making me think I’ll go with loading a SWF, but still thinking it through.

Here’s a list of posts/documentation that I’m finding useful: