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.