HxMake

HxMake is a Haxeified approach to writing build scripts and toolchains for native C intended to be compiled for use with FFI.

All it does is aggregate the flags and convert them to their appropriate flags on the selected compiler.

Right now it supports:

• gcc
• cl.exe
• clang
• clang-cl

HxMakefile

An HxMakefile looks something like this:

-D SOME_DEFINE=FOO
-lib odbc32
-src odbc.c
-o odbc.dll
-win-api

On cl (and clang-cl, barring the cl) would give you:

> cl /c odbc.c
> cl /LD odbc.obj /link /OUT:odbc.dll odbc32.lib

On gcc:

> gcc -c odbc.c -o odbc.obj
> gcc -mwindows -shared -o odbc.dll odbc.obj -o odbc.dll -lodbc32

The list of flags are:

• -lib - The name of a library; this can either be a .dll or a .lib file
• -src - The name of a C src file; right now, HxMake can only handle passing one source file to the underlying compiler toolchain
• -include-path - An include path; this directory should contain headers that are referenced by -src
• -include-header - A forcibly included header file; I don't see any real use for this, but both gcc and cl support it. This will effectively inject #include <file> at the top of your -src file.
• -lib-path - A library path to be searched in addition to the LIB environment variable. You might use this, for instance, to link the HashLink runtime (on gcc this is -L and on CL /LIBPATH:)
• -win-api - Indicates that the native code uses the Windows API; this only makes a difference on gcc, cl should already have the Windows environment set up (this adds -mwindows to the gcc command.)
• -D - A preprocessor define to be passed to the underlying C compiler.
• -o - The output file; this will be a either a .dll, .so, etc...

Usage

You can compile HxMake from sources, however, right now, it has little use a standalone tool. It's main purpose is to facilitate some cross-platform compatibility in building for the anvil library.

Native Extension Library Authors

You should use this within anvil by using anvil's new hxMakefile option.

anvil will then run HxMake on the HxMakefile and users of your library can specify the compiler HxMake uses with -D hxmake-compiler=<cl|gcc|clang|clang-cl> in their project .hxml file.