When "mavenizing" a Flex SDK (convert the Flex SDK to Maven artifacts) you need to indicate the Flash Player version. Does it mean that I can only create Flex swf web (not air) applications which run on that version of the Flash Player or can I still target earlier versions?
I was wondering if I can simply select the most recent Flash Player version or if I should keep in mind that some of the users are still using an older version.
Actually the mavenizer creates artifacts for whatever it finds. Usually you installed a Flex version with the version you selected in the Installer. The Mavenizer can only create artifacts for what he finds. If you have multiple versions in your FDK, it will generate mutliple versions.
So if you want to target 9.0 for example, you have to have the playerglobal for that in the "FDK-home/frameworks/libs/player/9.0" directory and the Mavenizer will create artifacts for 9.0. You can then simply reference playerglobal in version 9.0 and as long as you only use parts of flex that don't need anything beyond 9.0 you should be good to go.
You can still target earlier versions. Just think of that version selection as the minimum required flash player version. Certain bits of functionality were exposed to the FlexSDK in certain versions of the flash player. For example feature X is available in Flash Player 10.0 but not in Flash Player 9.0, so if you use feature X then you will require at least Flash Player 10.
No you can target other versions. You can also change the target version after the fact (look at the scripts in the ide directory).
Newer versions of the Flash Player have security fixes and better performance, but it's not the version you compile the SDK has any effect on this, it's the version that you run the swf in that matters. Given that I'd compile for a older version of the Flash Player to give a wide user base, (for instance target 11.1) unless you need to use some of the very latest Flash Player features.
Each version of the SDK was tested with several versions of the FP but not all of them, so it may be possible (but unlikely) bugs exist on a version the Flash Player that the SDK wasn't tested with.
