bigasdev / haxe-electron-learning

learning how to use haxe-electron

Electron app base for Haxe

About

This project is the minimal structure to easily build an Electron based app using Haxe language.

Features

• Haxe + Heaps engine to render 2D/3D in a WebGL canvas
• jQuery for all DOM manipulations (you can use something else if you prefer)
• Electron auto-updater (using Git releases)

Installing

Requirements

You will need:

• Haxe compiler,
• NPM to install dependencies,
• My libs deepnightLibs for Haxe (see below),
• VScode is recommended.

Installing Haxe

Please refer to this tutorial to install Haxe: Quick guide to install Haxe.

Getting "deepnightLibs"

Run the following command to install my deepnightLibs:

haxelib git deepnightLibs https://github.com/deepnight/deepnightLibs.git

Getting the source code

Method 1: fork

Nothing special here, you probably know the drill.

Method 2: using GitHub template

Just go to the ElectronBase repository on GitHub and click on the "Use this template" button.

Learn more about GitHub templates here.

Method 3: adding an upstream remote

This method is quite similar to a fork:

1. Make a new empty repo somewhere. It must be strictly empty: no LICENSE, no README, nothing.
2. Clone it on your system
3. Run:

git remote add electronBase https://github.com/deepnight/electronBase.git
git pull electronBase master
git push origin master

Installing Electron and dependencies

After retrieving the source code, open a command line in the root of the repo and run:

npm i

Usage

Repo structure

• src/electron.main/: Haxe source code for the Electron Main (ie. very first JS file to be ran on startup).
• src/electron.renderer/: Haxe source code for the Electron Renderer (ie. the actual app browser window).
• src/bindinds/: various extern bindings for Haxe (jQuery, electron auto-updater etc).
• electron/: Electron related files (ie. application and redistributable assets)
• res/: Heaps (webGL) resources, if any.

Compiling

To build the Electron main JS:

haxe main.debug.hxml

To build the Electron renderer JS:

haxe renderer.debug.hxml

Alternatively, you can build non-debug files using:

haxe main.hxml
haxe renderer.hxml

Or:

npm run compile

Running

To run the compiled app:

npm start

NOTE: for some obscure reason, this last command might not work. You can still run the app by either:

• using VScode, and executing Start debugging command.
• run npm run pack-test to quickly create an unpacked redistributable, then execute the .exe file in the /electron/redist/win-unpacked folder.

Creating redistributables

Windows:

npm run pack-win

macOS (requires an actual OSX environment):

npm run pack-macos

Linux:

npm run pack-linux-x86