Part 1 – Get The Basics Going

I’ve just got a shiny new computer at home – nothing installed. So it seems like a good chance to go through exactly what it takes to get and NME sample up and running on a new Windows 7 box.

8:20pm For starters, I’ll need a c++ compiler, so first thing is to start the MSVC 2010 Express downloading: 2010-Visual-CPP.

8:25pm OK – I’ve signed my rights away and that is downloading. The next thing I’ll need is haxe. It is easy to install from here.

8:28pm Haxe 2.07, neko 1.81 downloaded and installed. Windows complained that it might not have installed correctly, but this is just because the exe had “installer” in the name, and did not write an “uninstall” entry.

Test: Start a “cmd” prompt by clicking on the Windows start circle and type “cmd[Enter]” into the search box. And in this box, type “haxe [Enter]”. I am now rewarded with the haxe help message.

8:35pm Visual C++ Express in successfully installed.
Test: Start up a new cmd shell, and type “cl“. This does not work because the exe can’t be found in my path. But here is the trick. Type “c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\Tools\vsvars32.bat” at the prompt (note:include the quotes!), and get the message “Setting environment for using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 x86 tools.”. Now “cl” is rewarded with the Microsoft banner.

8:41pm I’m on a bit of a roll here, so I’ll see if I can get an haxe project going. As I said, I have nothing installed, so I’ll go old-school. First thing is to make a directory. The cmd prompt starts in my home directory (c:\Users\Hugh), and I will make a directory:
mkdir projects
cd projects
mkdir hello
cd hello
And now, do the best I can:
notepad.exe Hello.hx (yes I do want to create the file)

class Hello
{
  public static function main()
  {
     trace("Hello!");
  }
}

And switch back to the cmd prompt:
haxe -main Hello -neko hello.n
neko hello.n
Hello.hx:5: Hello!

Woo Hoo! 8:48pm and I’ve run my own program.

Now lets get even more adventurous, and try a c++ example. Trying:
haxe -main Hello -cpp bin
Tells me that “Project hxcpp is not installed” – so let’s install it:
haxelib install hxcpp
And try again:
haxe -main Hello -cpp bin
And test:
bin\Hello.exe
8:43pm, I have my first hxcpp prgram working!

Now, try for some graphics:
haxelib intall nme
and start a new project:
cd ..
mkdir graphics1
cd graphics1
copy “c:\Motion-Twin\haxe\lib\nme\2,0,1\samples\02-Text\Sample.hx”
haxe -main Sample -cpp bin -lib nme
bin\Sample.exe

9:05pm And there it is. Haxe, neko, hxcpp, nme VC2010 installed and run in 40 minutes, including this write up.

Part 2 – Compile NME From Source

Well, that went much better than I expected, so I will now attempt some bleeding-edge stuff. The version on NME used above is old, and I have no one to blame but myself. My intentions are to do a release soon, but I just have not got my finger out. Which leave me with the option of compiling NME from source if I want the latest features.

First thing, is to create a place where I can download various bits of source code for compiling. I’m going to put it a “e:\code.google”, because my C drive is a fast SSD, and has limited room.

e:
mkdir code.google
cd code.google

Following the instructions from the source page, but changing the name, I can get a copy with:
svn checkout http://nekonme.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ nme
– if only I had svn installed. So first install this, I’ll be using this version. Once installed, I have to restart the cmd prompt and do the vsvars32.bat thing again. Now when I try again, I get the required files. There is also a companion project to go with NME, and that is the “sdl-static” project, which contains libraries required by NME. To get this, simply do:
svn checkout http://sdl-static.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ sdl-static
This takes a while….

Time to build –
cd nme\project
haxelib run hxcpp Build.xml
The “haxelib” tool looks for a file called “run.n” in an installed haxe library and runs it. In the hxcpp project, the run.n file gathers compiler options to build the haxe output. This same program can be used to build other projects – including the NME project. Unfortunately, compiling NME like this gives the error ” cannot open input file ‘ddraw.lib'”. This is because the VC express install does not have all the required system support files. This file can be found in the “DirectX SDK”, and I’ll be using the June 2010 version. This is a huge file, so it will take a while. If you think it is a lot of effort for a tiny lib, then you are right.

10:10pm and the download has finished. I have chosen to install it in “e:\SDKs\Microsoft DirectX SDK (June 2010)”, because I’m trying not to put crap on my C drive, and I will be installing quite a few SDKs, and it is nice to have them all together.

This does not immediately fix the problem, because the NME project does not know where I installed it. This is where the per-machine hxcpp config comes in.

Following the instructions in BuildCommon.xml, I create a file in “C:\Users\Hugh” called “.hxcpp_config.xml”, and put the following in it:

<xml>
  <section id="exes">
     <linker id="dll" if="windows">
        <flag value = "-libpath:e:\SDKs\Microsoft DirectX SDK (June 2010)\Lib\x86"/>
     </linker>
  </section>
</xml>

Oh crikey! Looks like Microsoft in their wisdom have dropped support for this ddraw.lib, and I’m currently using a version of SDL that needs it! It’s OK, problem solved – I’ve added it to the NME project, but you still need the SDK for dxguid.lib, which I guess I should also add.

Anyhow, after a long delay, at 10:30pm I have NME building!

Now, going back to the original graphics1 example, the first thing to do is tell haxe to use our SVN haxe code instead of the 2.0.1 dowloaded from haxelib. This is done via:
haxelib dev nme e:/code.google/nme

Then build & test:
haxe -main Sample -cpp bin -lib nme
bin\Sample.exe

Which works as before. But now we can test some of the new features in NME. First get the new sample, and the new associated project file:
copy e:\code.google\nme\samples\02-Text\Sample.hx .
copy e:\code.google\nme\samples\02-Text\Sample.nmml .

Then you can use the NME build tool, with the command “test” (which is “build” and “run”) on the Sample.nmml project file, and for the target “neko”.
haxelib run nme test Sample.nmml neko
And you can see the result. Then you can test for cpp:
haxelib run nme test Sample.nmml cpp

So it’s now 10:45pm (had to catch the end of “Dexter”) and I’ve successfully compiled the latest version of NME and tested the new project feature.

Part 3 – Android

Things seem to still be going well, so I’m going to take one more step – android (spoiler – this is going to take longer than expected). First thing to so is install the Java Development Kit. (NOTE: Install the “windows” version, not the “x64” version) Then, the android SDK.
I installed java JRE and JDK in my SDK directory, but Google’s (always painful) build tools seem to think I have not installed java, even though it works from the cmd prompt. Thank guys. So I’ve uninstalled it, and reinstalled the JRE in the default location, and now it seems happy. The Android SDK download is just the start – it now runs and downloads a whole bunch more. This looks like it may take some time…

I may as well get on with downloading the NDK too. And while I wait for those I’ll get my phone ADB USB drivers installed. My HTC phone actually installs the drivers when I install HTCSync, found on my sdcard that was shipped with it.
EDIT: The android ndk r5b still has issues with exceptions/c++. However, these can be solved by dropping this version of libstdc++.a from the Crystax r4 distribution over the top of sources/cxx-stl/gnu-libstdc++/libs/armeabi/libstdc++.a in your downloaded ndk. If google ever manage to write a good build system, they might end up being a successful company.

The Google build tools also require the “Cygwin” utilities, so install these too.

Finally, we will need a new version of hxcpp, which we can get with:
e:
svn checkout http://hxcpp.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ hxcpp
haxelib dev hxcpp e:\code.google\hxcpp

11:45pm, I have finally downloaded and installed the Android prerequisites (I think) but will give up now.

Next day – Here we go again. Now to use the google android NDK, you need to have the cygwin dlls in your exe path. To change the path, right click in the “Computer” shortcut in the start menu, and choose “properties”, then on the left “Advance system settings”, then the “Environment Variables” button and scroll through the top bit for “PATH” and click “edit”. This already has haxe and neko in it, so we add the cygwin:
%HAXEPATH%;%NEKO_INSTPATH%;e:\SDKs\cygwin\bin
Now restart the cmd prompt, and typing “ls” should work.
And one more thing – in lieu of using “eclipse” for java building (which I just can’t stand – don’t get me started), the google tools need the “ant” program, which you install by unzipping somewhere.

Tell the build system where we installed these things.

set ANT_HOME=e:/SDKs/ant
set ANDROID_SDK=e:\SDKs\android-sdk
set ANDROID_NDK_ROOT=e:\SDKs\android-ndk
set JAVA_HOME=e:\SDKs\Java\jdk1.6.0_24

And rebuild nme, like before, except that the “obj” directory should be removed first, because I have not yet allowed 2 compilers to be running at the same time.
haxelib run hxcpp Build.xml -Dandroid

Now, back in the original directory, we can build + run for android:
haxelib run nme test Sample.nmml android

Which, finally, works! You can terminate the debug log with control-c.

So, an awful lot of set up, but subsequent projects should only be a single line.