I'm trying to do a very simple app in Flash/Flex, that loads an image embedded in the swf itself and then shows it. The thing is I'm trying to do it using the command line only (mxmlc and compc) and without using @Embed, and failing miserably.

I have a very simple Main.as :

package
{
    import flash.display.*;
    import flash.utils.*;

    public class Main extends Sprite
    {
        public function Main () : void 
        {
            var pDef:Class = getDefinitionByName("icon_big.png") as Class;
            var _image:BitmapData = new pDef(0, 0);

            var pSprite:Sprite = new Sprite();          
            pSprite.graphics.beginBitmapFill(_image);
            pSprite.graphics.drawRect(0, 0, _image.width, _image.height);
            pSprite.graphics.endFill();

            addChild(pSprite);
        }   
    }
}

This works fine if I add icon_big.png to the Library using the Flash IDE, but I can't figure out how to do it from the command line.

I'm using compc to put the png inside a swc :

compc --include-file icon_big.png icon_big.png -output assets.swc

This generates a 17 kb assets.swf, slightly bigger than icon_big.png. Then I try to compile and link Main.as :

mxmlc -include-libraries+=assets.swc Main.as

This produces a 944 byte Main.swf, which clearly doesn't include the asset, and fails at runtime.

According to the mxmlc docs I found, -include-libraries should link with every class, including the ones not directly referenced by code (as is the case here, since I'm getting the class from code), and it unsurprisingly fails at runtime.

Note that this same code (or, more precisely, quite equivalent code) works when used within a Flash project - I'm not looking to fix the code, but how to do in the command line whatever Flash does internally.

I feel I'm just "not getting" something... any clues?