11.1 Using a Haxe library with the Haxe Compiler

Any installed Haxe library can be made available to the compiler through the -lib <library-name> argument. This is very similiar to the -cp <path> argument, but expects a library name instead of a directory path. These commands are explained thoroughly in Compiler Usage.

For our exemplary usage we chose a very simple Haxe library called "random". It provides a set of static convenience methods to achieve various random effects, such as picking a random element from an array.

class Main {
  static public function main() {
    var elt = Random.fromArray([1, 2, 3]);
    trace(elt);
  }
}

Compiling this without any -lib argument causes an error message along the lines of Unknown identifier : Random. This shows that installed Haxe libraries are not available to the compiler by default unless they are explicitly added. A working command line for above program is haxe -lib random -main Main --interp.

If the compiler emits an error Error: Library random is not installed : run 'haxelib install random' the library has to be installed via the haxelib command first. As the error message suggests, this is achieved through haxelib install random. We will learn more about the haxelib command in Using Haxelib.