To progress this project a bit further, I needed a real device – so I convinced the little woman that an iPod touch would be a good thing to have around. She seems to have taken to it, so now I’m thinking I may need one each :).
After much phaffing about, I’ve finally managed to get stuff running on the actual device. I had to comment out quite a bit of NME, since I only used the base SDL, not all the extras. Boehm GC was also a bit tricky because I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I brought in some bits from the mono project and then disabled USE_MUNMAP because it caused it to crash. In the end, it seems to work – no crash, but then I may not have been running it long enough. I will have to try some memory thrashing later.
One thing I found with Xcode is that if you ever change the project name/AppID settings then you really need to clean the project, exit Xcode and get back in. But the hardest part was working out where to go the get the developer certificate! I guess I’m a bit thick, or missed the meno, but it took me ages to get to the web form to create a certificate.
So the big question is perfromance. In this demo, initally, it runs at about 2.5 frames a second (I don’t have a fps counter yet), but slows a bit later when things spread out. But this is using the high-quality, anti-aliasing software renderer. Next job is to hook up the OpenGLES renderer, then I’ll really know where I stand.
But overall, pretty positive result I think.
iPhone Dev
The c++ backend for haxe generates standard c++, suitable for the gcc compiler. iPhone dev uses gcc, and can link against c++, which make you think that iPhone dev can use haxe. Simple? Well, actually it was pretty simple. The hardest bit for me was to grok the components of an Xcode project, moving from dynamic libraries to static ones and getting SDL working.
The iPhone SDK requires you statically link everything, and I wanted to make it easy as possible to change haxe code -> generate cpp -> link to Xcode -> test of iPhone (or simulator). The solution I am currently using is to generate a library from the haxe code using the standard command line make, and include this library in the Xcode project. I hope to add a “pre build” step to drive the make system automatically.
Hxcpp executables typically use the “NME” library for graphics, which is in turn based on libSDL. The good news is that the source version of libSDL compiles for the iPhone! I tried the svn download first, but this does not seem as nicely bundled as the Apirl 13 version, which worked very nicely indeed (besides a small problem with RenderRect args changing).
Getting the hxcpp backend to generate a library was almost trivial – you take the same obj files and put them in a lib instead of an exe. The only minor difference is you do not explicitly create a “main” (ie, program entry point) call, but instead create a function (currently called \_\_hxcpp\_lib\_init) that the user supplied main line must call. This may also be good for windows applicaions that want to use a “WinMain” instead of console based main function.
Compiling the hxcpp runtime as a static library was also pretty easy after the post 0.4 code reorganisation that assimilates thirdparty code rather than linking to it. Again, it was a matter of taking the same objs and putting them in a lib instead of an dso. Initally I got link error when linking with Xcode, but if you include 1 real, small c++ file in the project, these link error go away.
Compiling “plugin” modules as static libraries (eg, NME) was slightly more difficult. I could use c++ static initialisation to auto-register the exported functions, if I could get Xcode to link to the required obj. To force objs to be included, I needed to put a special symbol in each cpp file that exports functions, and make reference to these from the main code base. It is really only something that needs to be sorted out once, and it is done now, so it should not really be a problem any more.
I also have to cull out quite a bit of code (eg fonts, image loading, opengl & sound) from NME, but I can look at adding these bits in one by one.
The astute ones among you will notice that the colour of the above circle if RGB/BGR reversed. This is something that will obviously need to be fixed.
Not being used to Xcode, it took a bit of getting used to – things like frameworks etc. However, I think that ultimately, we could end up with a very nice solution. The idea would be to create frameworks for hxcpp and nme, and a project template to link it all together. You would then create a project from the template, modifiy the boiler-plate haxe code and hit build. This would also be good for standard mac apps (rather then iPhone apps). Still a way off this, but moving in that direction.
SDL, LGPL and you
Dynamically linking against SDL (or NME) normally discharges your obligations to the GPL, however in this case, we are statically linking to it so there are still some issues. However, all is not lost because my interpretation is that you must allow others to relink your application. (ie “so that the user can modify the Library and then relink to produce a modified executable containing the modified Library”, where Library is “SDL”). So you must forefiet your hxcpp compiled library file (rather than haxe or cpp source), as well as you project files (which should be boiler-plate anyhow). So this is actually borderline acceptable, although I will work towards a GPL free solution).
To progress this project a bit further, I needed a real device – so I convinced the little woman that an iPod touch would be a good thing to have around. She seems to have taken to it, so now I’m thinking I may need one each :).
