HashLink

HashLink is a virtual machine for Haxe

Compile

HashLink bytecode can be produced by using Haxe compiler (requires Haxe 3.4+)

haxe -hl output.hl -main MyApp

Run

HashLink bytecode can be run using HL/JIT virtual machine.

hl output.hl

Dual compilation

HashLink bytecode can be either run through HL/JIT virtual machine or converted to C with HL/C:

haxe -hl out/main.c -main MyApp
gcc -O3 -o myapp -std=c11 -I out out/main.c -lhl [-L/path/to/required/hdll]

Use HL/JIT for daily development (fast compilation time)
Use HL/C for final release (best performance)
HL/C and HL/JIT share same runtime and semantics

Features

HashLink runtime includes the following features:

Fully compatible with Haxe specification
Support file I/O, regular expressions, network, etc.
Unicode strings by default
Mark-and-not-sweep Garbage Collector
x86 and x86-64 HL/C compilation
x86 and x86-64 HL/JIT compilation

Libraries

While the standard HL runtime provides support for Haxe standard library, HashLink also provides several libraries that can optionally be used to build HL-specific applications.

FMT Library

Provide binary format support:

Inflate/deflate ZLIB compression
JPG decoding
Image scaling/resampling
... more to come

UI Library

Provide OS UI operations:

Message/alert box
Scrollable text log with custom buttons
Async timer
(only supported on Windows for now)

SDL Library

Support for the popular SDL framework:

Window creation
Mouse and keyboard events
Full OpenGL 3.2+ API
Game controllers
Native cursors

Performance

HashLink uses advanced optimizations to increase Haxe performance:

HL bytecode is strictly typed
Fast anonymous objects access using typed "virtuals"
Static dispatch of object methods when no override exists
Compact memory representation for all values
Inference to reduce null field access checks to the minimum (soon)
Low level access for pointers, single float, 8 and 16 bits integers

Initial benchmark shows that HL/JIT outperforms Adobe AIR and Node/V8 in many cases. Many room for performance improvement exists in HL/JIT to bring it as much near as HL/C as possible.

Download

HashLink can be obtained using one of the following:

Download latest binary release
(Windows / Linux)
GitHub repository
for HL runtime and JIT VM
Compiling to HL requires Haxe 3.4+

Documentation

HashLink documentation can be accessed using:

Getting started with Haxe/HashLink
HashLink/C Compilation
API Documentation
HashLink Wiki
HashLink In Depth article series on Haxe blog:
- Part 1
- Part 2

Case Study: Northgard

Northgard is a 3D game created by ShiroGames.

Initially developed in Haxe with Adobe AIR, it now runs with HL and HLSDL library with the same performance.

The code consists in ~1200 classes containing ~11000 methods.
Timing has been measured on a low end Intel Q6600 @2.4 Ghz
Whole project recompilation takes 18.2 seconds
Recompilation with no change takes 2.4 seconds (using compilation server)
Recompilation with partial changes takes 5.8 seconds
Memory usage has been reduced from 900MB to 700MB
Northgard is built using the open-source Heaps.io game engine
Northgard is available on Steam for PC, Mac OS X and Linux but also on consoles Nintendo Switch, PS4 and Xbox One