Install haxe with Homebrew, apk, chocolatey, apt, dnf, Nix, pacman, scoop, winget, zypper

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• haxe
• haxelib

Project history

The Haxe manual traces the project to 22 October 2005, when Nicolas Cannasse started it as a successor to MTASC, the Motion-Twin Action Script Compiler, and to Motion-Twin's in-house MTypes language experiments. The early spelling was haXe, and the beta appeared in February 2006 with AVM bytecode and Neko as the first targets.

Haxe 1.0 followed in May 2006 with JavaScript code generation and early versions of defining language features such as type inference and structural subtyping. Later Haxe 1 releases added the Flash AVM2 target, haxelib, and ActionScript 3 support, tying the language to both Flash-era workflows and package-oriented reuse.

Haxe 2.0 arrived in July 2008 with a PHP target, and Haxe 2.04 added C++ in July 2009. The 2.x line also brought macros in 2011, major JavaScript target maintenance, and work that led toward Java and C# targets before the final Haxe 2.10 release in July 2012.

The Haxe Foundation was established after years of open-source development to fund long-term work, support the ecosystem, and provide a contact point for companies evaluating Haxe. With that backing, the Haxe compiler team moved to Haxe 3, released in May 2013.

The GitHub repository under HaxeFoundation was created in May 2013, matching the foundation-era source-hosting move. The repository README frames Haxe as a toolkit containing the language, cross-compiler, and standard library, with targets including JavaScript, C++, JVM, Lua, PHP, Python, HashLink, NekoVM, Flash bytecode, and the interpreter.

Adoption history

Haxe adoption grew first from Flash and game-development needs, then broadened with server, desktop, mobile, and command-line targets. The official use-case pages highlight games such as Dead Cells, Northgard, Papers, Please, Rymdkapsel, Defender's Quest, and Evoland, and also point to OpenFL, Heaps, Kha, Flambe, HaxeFlixel, and HaxePunk showcases.

The Haxe site describes use by independent developers and large corporate teams, and the Foundation page lists enterprise and professional partners. That mix explains Haxe's unusual package profile: it is a compiler in system package managers, a library ecosystem through haxelib, and an application/game tooling stack through frameworks built on top of it.

Haxelib is documented as the package manager for the Haxe Toolkit and a place to find and share Haxe libraries. That gives Haxe a two-layer adoption story for package nerds: operating-system package managers distribute the compiler, while haxelib distributes Haxe libraries and frameworks.

How it is used

Users install the Haxe compiler and invoke haxe to compile programs to a chosen target. haxelib manages libraries, and the official manual plus API documentation cover the language, compiler flags, target-specific details, standard library, and package manager workflow.

Haxe is commonly used when a team wants strong typing and one source language while producing JavaScript, native, VM, or bytecode outputs. Its package-manager footprint matters because language versions, target runtimes, and haxelib libraries have to line up cleanly for repeatable builds.

Why package nerds care

Haxe is interesting to package maintainers because it is both a compiler and an ecosystem root. A package formula has to expose the compiler and haxelib tools, while downstream projects may depend on target-specific runtimes such as Neko or HashLink and on libraries installed through haxelib.

Its history also explains why Haxe appears in many package indexes despite being niche compared with larger general-purpose languages: game frameworks, Flash migration paths, cross-platform app code, and generated-output workflows all created real demand for a portable compiler package.

Timeline

• 2005: Nicolas Cannasse starts Haxe on 22 October.
• 2006: Beta release appears in February with AVM bytecode and Neko targets.
• 2006: Haxe 1.0 is released in May with JavaScript code generation.
• 2006: haxelib is added during the Haxe 1 series.
• 2008: Haxe 2.0 is released with PHP target support.
• 2009: Haxe 2.04 adds the C++ target.
• 2011: Haxe 2.07 adds macro support.
• 2012: Haxe 2.10 is released as the final Haxe 2 line.
• 2013: Haxe 3 is released in May, backed by the Haxe Foundation era.
• 2013: HaxeFoundation/haxe repository is created on GitHub.

Related projects

• MTASC and MTypes are direct historical predecessors named by the Haxe manual.
• NekoVM, HashLink, OpenFL, Heaps, Kha, HaxeFlixel, HaxePunk, and Flambe are related ecosystem projects and targets/frameworks that shaped Haxe packaging and adoption.
• Haxelib is the companion package manager for sharing Haxe code libraries.

Sources

• https://api.github.com/repos/HaxeFoundation/haxe
• https://github.com/HaxeFoundation/haxe
• https://haxe.org/foundation/
• https://haxe.org/manual/haxelib.html
• https://haxe.org/manual/introduction-haxe-history.html
• https://haxe.org/manual/introduction-what-is-haxe.html
• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/HaxeFoundation/haxe/development/README.md