How to build .app for Haxe/Heaps

Preparing your game

Normally you would load your resources from the same directory as your binary, but when building for Mac, you will have to do it slightly differently. This is optional but good to do.

Instead of loading your res from ., your should load it from ../Resources/.

Mac .app structure

Game.app
|_Contents
  |_Info.plist
  |_MacOS
    |_run.sh
	  |_*.dylib
	  |_*.hdll
	  |_hl
	  |_hlboot.dat
  |_Resources

Info.plist

You should be able to to find the full xml online, (or just copy it from another .app) The following is what I got working.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>CFBundleDevelopmentRegion</key>
	<string>English</string>
	<key>CFBundleExecutable</key>
	<string>run.sh</string>
	<key>CFBundleName</key>
	<string>Game Name</string>
	<key>CFBundleGetInfoString</key>
  <string>Made with Haxe/Heaps</string>
	<key>CFBundleIconFile</key>
	<string>icon.png</string>
	<key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
	<string></string>
	<key>CFBundleInfoDictionaryVersion</key>
	<string>6.0</string>
	<key>CFBundlePackageType</key>
	<string>APPL</string>
	<key>CFBundleShortVersionString</key>
	<string>0.1.0</string>
	<key>CFBundleSignature</key>
	<string></string>
	<key>CFBundleVersion</key>
	<string>1.0</string>
	<key>CFBundleSupportedPlatforms</key>
	<array>
		<string>MacOSX</string>
	</array>
</dict>
</plist>

We will also be using run.sh to run instead of running hl directly.

run.sh

#!/bin/bash
BASEDIR=$(dirname "$0")
cd $BASEDIR
export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=.
./hl

This is to help set the running directory + also set the dylib path.

hlboot.dat

Rename your game.hl to hlboot.dat. Alternatively you could just specify the name in the run.sh.

dylib and hdll

Since there is no releases for Mac on Hashlink's github, we will need to build hashlink ourselves. Follow the instructions on the hashlink github.

Let's first copy all the hdll in hashlink and also libhl.dylib to MacOS. Not all hdll are required. For heaps, the basic required ones are

fmt.hdll
openal.hdll
sdl.hdll(if you are using sdl)
ui.hdll
uv.hdll

For each of them, there will be some dylib that are required.

fmt.hdll

libpng16.16.dylib
libturbojpeg.0.dylib
libvorbisfile.3.dylib
- libvorbis.0.dylib libogg.0.dylib
libz.1.dylib

sdl.hdll

libSDL2-2.0.0.dylib

openal.hdll

libopenal.dylib

uv.hdll

libuv.1.dylib

Note that the dylib names need to be exactly what is required or it will not work. These names work as of now but it may change in the future with new releases of hashlink etc.

You can find out what the names of each of the dylib needs to be by using otool recursively.

otool -L fmt.hdll

fmt.hdll:
        fmt.hdll (compatibility version 0.0.0, current version 0.0.0)
        libhl.dylib (compatibility version 0.0.0, current version 0.0.0)
        /usr/local/opt/libpng/lib/libpng16.16.dylib (compatibility version 54.0.0, current version 54.0.0)
        /usr/local/opt/jpeg-turbo/lib/libturbojpeg.0.dylib (compatibility version 0.0.0, current version 0.2.0)
        /usr/lib/libz.1.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.2.11)
        /usr/local/opt/libvorbis/lib/libvorbisfile.3.dylib (compatibility version 7.0.0, current version 7.8.0)
        /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1292.0.0)

Although it looks like we will only need libvorbisfile.3.dylib, if you run otool -L libvorbisfile.3.dylib, you will realised that the other dylib are required by vorbisfile.

Do this and you can figure what you need, and the specific name that the file needs to be.

All dylib and hdll can be placed in MacOS together with hl and run.sh. I believe we can put it elsewhere, i.e. Frameworks, and export the path instead. I haven't test that as of the writing, so when I find time, I will test and update again.

ZwodahS/how_to_build_for_mac_haxe_heap.md