Building Haxe from source

Obtaining the source

The Haxe compiler sources are hosted on GitHub under the HaxeFoundation account. The Haxe repository has several submodules, so cloning it should be done with the --recursive flag like so:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/HaxeFoundation/haxe.git

Alternatively, source .zip archives or tarballs can be obtained from the GitHub Haxe release overview. However, the git submodules are not included, so you will have to manually place the source code of submodules into appropreate sub-folders.

Building

For Haxe 4 and later, please read the extra/BUILDING.md file in the source folder.

For Haxe 3.x, read below.

Building on OS X

The dependencies can be easily installed by Homebrew. In fact, if you only want to use the latest development branch of Haxe, without modifying the source, simply run:

brew install haxe --HEAD

Use brew reinstall haxe --HEAD to upgrade in the future.

If you want to start hacking the Haxe compiler, it is better to clone manually and use the Makefile:

  1. Install XQuartz (required by OCaml): brew cask install xquartz
  2. Install dependencies: brew install ocaml camlp4 pcre neko
  3. Navigate to where the Haxe sources are and build Haxe using make:
make
make install

Building on Linux

  1. Install Neko, which is available in the repositories of many Linux distributions. e.g. On Ubuntu, just sudo apt-get install neko.
  2. Install OCaml (4.02 or above), camlp4, pcre, and zlib. Again, try to find such packages in the Linux repositories.
  3. Navigate to where the Haxe sources are and build Haxe using make:
make
make install

Building on Windows (mingw)

Installation

  • Download 32-bit installer from the fdopen's fork: https://fdopen.github.io/opam-repository-mingw/installation/
  • Install it, in Cygwin package selection also check mingw64-i686-zlib and mingw64-i686-pcre (used by Haxe). You might need to switch "View" in top-right corner to "Not Installed" to see it in the list. When installer doesn't provide option to install packages, navigate to "C:\OCaml32\home\nadako.opam\4.02.3+mingw32c\bin" and run command-line cygwin-install.exe gui.

  • Run OCaml32 terminal from the desktop shortcut, from it:

    • Install dependencies through opam: opam install camlp4 sedlex ocamlfind xml-light extlib rope ptmap sha

Running from cmd/powershell

  • Add these to the start of your PATH (actual paths may differ depending on your install path, username, and OCaml version):

    • cygwin tools: C:\OCaml32\bin
    • runtime dlls: C:\OCaml32\usr\i686-w64-mingw32\sys-root\mingw\bin
    • ocaml bin: C:\OCaml32\home\nadako\.opam\4.02.3+mingw32c\bin
    • flexlink bin: C:\OCaml32\usr\local\bin

  • Add new env variables (actual paths may differ depending on your install path, username, and OCaml version):

    • OCAML_TOPLEVEL_PATH=C:\OCaml32\home\nadako\.opam\4.02.3+mingw32c\lib\toplevel
    • OCAMLLIB=C:\OCaml32\home\nadako\.opam\4.02.3+mingw32c\lib\ocaml

  • I couldn't get opam itself running through cmd/powershell because it needs some more environment that's inited in .bashrc, but I think installing opam packages from within Cygwin terminal is acceptable.

Testing

Troubleshoot

Building on FreeBSD

  1. Become root to install packages: su -
  2. Install the build dependencies: pkg install ocaml ocaml-camlp4 ocaml-findlib pcre gmake git neko
  3. As your unprivileged user, check out the project: cd ~ && git clone --recursive https://github.com/HaxeFoundation/haxe.git
  4. Build your sources: cd haxe && gmake "CFLAGS=-I /usr/local/include/"
  5. Optionally install it to the system: su - followed by cd /home/username/haxe && gmake install

If you want to update, it's usually enough to just recompile the compiler by updating your checkout using git pull followed by issueing the command gmake haxe.

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