Note
Source is no longer available.
Important to say, some things can be outdated.
Haxe can compile to many different target platforms, one of which is its very own HashLink VM. This doc is a guide to installing the HashLink VM onto Debian GNU/Linux (the “Testing” distribution), compiling your Haxe code to HashLink bytecode, and then running that bytecode on the HashLink VM (aka “using HL/JIT”).
Note
The Haxe HashLink target can also produce C code which you’d then compile with a C compiler like GCC. This use of HashLink is called “HL/C”, in contrast to the above “HL/JIT”, which we’re using in this doc.
To install the latest version of Haxe onto GNU/Linux, see my getting started with Haxe doc.
We’ll build the latest HashLink release from source and install into /usr/local. But before that, per the HashLink README, make sure you have a handful of recommended libraries installed:
# apt install libpng-dev libturbojpeg0-dev libvorbis-dev
# apt install libopenal-dev libsdl2-dev
# apt install libmbedtls-dev libuv1-dev
No longer as root (from the above use of apt), download the latest binary release of HashLink (approx 4 MB) and build it like so:
Important
If upgrading: first, from your previous hashlink version’s directory (in ~/opt/hashlink-1.X), as root, run make uninstall there.
As root, install HashLink:
# make install
HL will be installed into /usr/local. Then run
# ldconfig
so the system can properly find the libraries just copied to /usr/local/lib (ldconfig searches the library directories and updates /etc/ld.so.cache).
Note
If you want to use HL/C you’ll need to install via haxelib (not as root) the “hashlink” library:
$ haxelib install hashlink
This provides the build tools to make HL/C work, analogous to how the hxcpp and hxjava libraries provide the build tools for the C++ and Java targets, respectively. See the currently-installed version:
$ haxelib list hashlink
You should now have hl installed:
$ which hl
/usr/local/bin/hl
$ hl
HL/JIT 1.10.0 (c)2015-2019 Haxe Foundation
Usage : hl [--debug <port>] [--debug-wait] <file>
Try it out on some code. cd path/to/my-proj. Create a src/Main.hx file containing:
And an hl.hxml file containing:
-p src
-m Main
--hl out.hl
Then (instead of having to type out haxe -p src -main Main --hl out.hl (and then run via hl out.hl)), you can build and run in one shot from your project’s top-level directory:
haxe hl.hxml && hl out.hl
getting this output:
Main.hx:3: Hello, World!