Hello Hashlink

HashLink is a virtual machine for Haxe. It can be used to build native desktop applications as well mobile platforms (Android / iOS) and consoles. installed both Heaps and Visual Studio Code, let’s create a new Heaps application.

Differences with the Hello World tutorial

• compile.hxml needs a different compilation target, hl, and other libraries to manage rendering
• index.html file -

  Concepts

• compile.hxml file to tell it what to compile, how and where to compile it, and which libraries to include.
• main. -

  .├── .vscode/│   └── launch.json├── res/├── src/│   └── Main.hx└── compile.hxml

  Create your project

• helloHeaps
• compile.hxml -

  -cp src-lib heaps-lib hlsdl-hl hello.hl-main Main

• -cp src Tells haxe where to search for your code files
• -lib heaps Tells haxe to import the heaps library
• -lib hlsdl Tells haxe to import the hlsdl rendering library
• -hl hello.hl Tells haxe to compile to hashlink bytecode in the project directory
• -main Main Tells haxe that Main.hx is your entry point -lib hlsdl tells Heaps to compile with SDL/OpenGL support. If you are on Windows you can use -lib hldx instead.

  Open with VSCode

  helloHeaps folder with VSCode by launching VSCode and navigating the main menu File > Open Folder

  Create Hello World example

  Main.hx in a src folder in your project directory and put the following content

  class Main extends hxd.App {    override function init() {        var tf = new h2d.Text(hxd.res.DefaultFont.get(), s2d);        tf.text = "Hello Hashlink !";    }    static function main() {        new Main();    }}

  s2d and set its text.

  Compile and run Output

  To be able to compile and debug your application directly from vscode, you need to create a launch task. .vscode directory in your project folder and create a new file called launch.json. Add the following code to the file:

  {    "version": "0.2.0",    "configurations": [        {            "name": "HashLink",            "request": "launch",            "type": "hl",            "cwd": "${workspaceFolder}",            "preLaunchTask": {                "type": "haxe",                "args": "active configuration"            }        }    ]}

  F5, the project will compile and run. Ctrl-Shift-B and select haxe : active configuration hello.hl file created in your project folder. compile.hxml:

  -D windowSize=1366x768

  Debugging

  You can put breakpoints into your Heaps application by clicking in the margin to left to the line number in your source code. You can then start again the problem and see it break at the desired position.

  Compile and Run natively

  hello.hl file contains bytecode that can be run with the HashLink virtual machine using hl hello.hl. It does give quite good performances and have been proven by successful commercial games such as Northgard or Dead Cells. However, it is also possible to compile the HashLink code using a native compiler. This allows to compile for consoles and mobile. compile.hxml to use -hl out/main.c instead of -hl hello.hl. out containing a lot of generated C code that needs to be built using a native compiler and linked to the same HashLink runtime that the HashLink virtual machine is using. for iOS, look at for Android, look at this thread * for Consoles (Nintendo Switch, Sony PS4, Microsoft XBoxOne), please contact us at nicolas @ haxe.org if you are a registered developer for one or several of these