Haxe is a high-level

cross-platform Within computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several Computing platform, computing platforms. Some ...

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...

and

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that Translator (computing), translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primaril ...

that can produce applications and

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

for many different computing platforms from one code-base. It is free and open-source software, released under an

MIT License The MIT License is a permissive software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1980s. As a permissive license, it puts very few restrictions on reuse and therefore has high license compatibility. Unl ...

. The compiler is written in OCaml. It can be run in server-mode to provide code completion for

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a Application software, software application that provides comprehensive facilities for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source-code editor, build automation tools, an ...

s (IDEs). Haxe includes a set of features and a standard libraryIntroduction to the Haxe Standard Library
Haxe Docs supported across all platforms, including numeric data types, strings,

arrays An array is a systematic arrangement of similar objects, usually in rows and columns. Things called an array include: {{TOC right Music * In twelve-tone and serial composition, the presentation of simultaneous twelve-tone sets such that the ...

, maps, binary, reflective programming, maths, Hypertext Transfer Protocol (

HTTP HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, wher ...

), file system and common

file format A file format is a Computer standard, standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary format, pr ...

s. Haxe also includes platform-specific application programming interfaces ( APIs) for each compiler target. ''Kha'', '' OpenFL'', and ''Heaps.io'' are popular Haxe frameworks that enable creating multi-platform content from one codebase. Haxe originated with the idea of supporting client-side and server-side programming in one language, and simplifying the communication logic between them. Code written in Haxe can be compiled into

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

, C++,

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

Java virtual machine A Java virtual machine (JVM) is a virtual machine that enables a computer to run Java programs as well as programs written in other languages that are also compiled to Java bytecode. The JVM is detailed by a specification that formally descr ...

(JVM), PHP, C#, Python, Lua and Node.js. Haxe can also directly compile SWF, HashLink, and NekoVM bytecode and also runs in interpreted mode. Haxe supports externs (definition files) that can contain data type information of extant libraries to describe target-specific interaction in a type-safe manner, like C++ header files can describe the structure of existing object files. This enables to use the values defined in the files as if they were statically typed Haxe entities. Beside externs, other solutions exist to access each platform's native abilities. Many popular IDEs and source code editors have support available for Haxe development. No particular development environment or tool set is officially recommended by the Haxe Foundation, although VS Code, IntelliJ IDEA and HaxeDevelop have the most support for Haxe development. The core functionalities of syntax highlighting, code completion, refactoring, debugging, etc. are available to various degrees.

History

Development of Haxe began in October 2005. The first alpha version was released on November 14, 2005. Haxe 1.0 was released in April 2006, with support for Adobe Flash,

, and NekoVM programs. Support for PHP was added in 2008, and C++ was added in 2009. More platforms such as C# and Java were added with a compiler overhaul in 2012. Haxe was developed by Nicolas Cannasse and other contributors, and was originally named ''haXe'' because it was short, simple, and "has an X inside", which the author asserts humorously is needed to make any new technology a success. Haxe is the successor to the open-source ActionScript 2 compiler MTASC,MTASC Compiler
MTASC website also built by Nicolas Cannasse and is released under the GNU General Public License version 2 or later.

Compiler

The Haxe language can compile into bytecode that can be executed directly by the virtual machines it targets. It can compile to

in C++,

, PHP, C#,

, Python, and Lua. Haxe also has an interpreter called ''eval''. This same interpreter is also used compile-time to run macros, which allow modification of the abstract syntax tree (AST). This strategy of compiling to multiple source code languages is inspired by the write once, run anywhere paradigm. It also allows the programmer to choose the best platform for the job. Typical Haxe programs run identically on all platforms, but developers can specify platform-specific code and use conditional compilation to prevent it from compiling on other platforms. The Haxe compiler is an optimizing compiler, and uses field and function inlining, tail recursion elimination, constant folding, loop unrolling and dead code elimination (DCE) to optimize the run-time performance of compiled programs. The Haxe compiler offers opt-in null-safety, it checks compile-time for nullable values. The run-time performance of Haxe programs is at comparable speed to handwritten sources.

References

External links

* {{ML programming High-level programming languages Functional languages Multi-paradigm programming languages Object-based programming languages OCaml software Pattern matching programming languages Programming languages Programming languages created in 2005 Software using the GNU General Public License Source-to-source compilers Statically typed programming languages Articles with example JavaScript code

History

Compiler

See also

References

External links