npm-haxe

Installs Haxe using Node Package Manager aka npm

Key-features

• Global or per-project, sandboxed, standard Haxe installation
• Optional dependency to Neko/libneko (required for haxelib run ..., see below)
• Includes Haxelib
• Tested on Ubuntu/Linux and Windows

Usage

CLI installation

npm install haxe@next

By default, this will make haxe and haxelib available to npm scripts only, with haxelib repository sandboxed to your current working directory.

To have haxe and haxelib commands available globally, use the -g flag. This will also make the haxelib repo global.

Package.json sample

{
  "scripts":{
    "postinstall": "haxelib --always install build.hxml",
    "build": "haxe build.hxml"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "haxe": "next"
  }
}

Please notice the --always flag in the haxelib command, to avoid having to confirm haxelibs installation.

Running Haxe from NodeJS

This package also comes with the minimal bindings to run the Haxe compiler from NodeJS.

var haxe = require('haxe').haxe;
var haxelib = require('haxe').haxelib;

// all `spawn` calls return a ChildProcess instance

haxe.spawn( "-version" );
haxelib.spawn( "install", "hxnodejs" );

var server = haxe.spawn("--wait", "6000");

// or using `exec`

haxe.exec( ["-version"], function(err, stdout, stderr) {
    console.log('current version is', stderr);
} );

See also test.js

Configuration options

Currently, these configuration options are only settable from npm-haxe's package.json :(

"config": {
    "version": "3.2.1",
    "nightly": "",
    "haxelib_version": "3.2.0-rc.1"
}

We're working on exposing them to npmrc, which might be the cleanest option.

Version

See Haxe Download list. Please notice the directory name in the archive must match.

Nightlies

haxe:nightly value can be, for example "2016-02-25_development_7c4fd45", for current latest nightly build.

In this case, the haxe:version value is still used, and must match the one of the directory extracted from the archive.

Haxelib, Neko and HAXELIB_ENABLE_NEKO

By default, Haxelib commands are run through the Haxe interpreter. While this makes the package work without Neko, it will hang on most haxelib run ... commands.

In order to use Haxelib run commands, you need to install Neko on your own, and then use the HAXELIB_ENABLE_NEKO environment variable :

HAXELIB_ENABLE_NEKO=1 haxelib run ...

This will run the standard haxelib neko binary.

NB: If you get something like Uncaught exception - load.c(237) : Failed to load library : std.ndll (std.ndll: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory), it most certainly means your Neko install is broken...

Known issues

The package relies on the node command, which [has issues on some Ubuntu versions] (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21168141/cannot-install-packages-using-node-package-manager-in-ubuntu).

If you get an error similar to this :

sh: 1: node: not found
npm WARN This failure might be due to the use of legacy binary "node"
npm WARN For further explanations, please read /usr/share/doc/nodejs/README.Debian

Just install the nodejs-legacy package:

sudo apt-get install nodejs-legacy