One Year Of Haxe

• WWX 2013:
  • 3.0 release
  • Moved to github
  • First Haxe Foundation partners
• And then:
  • ~2300 commits later...
  • 3.1.0 in March
  • Followed by 3.1.1
  • and 3.1.2...
  • and 3.1.3 (;_;)
  • Now working on 3.2 !

3.1.x

• An update to 3.0 (no breaking change)
• Improves recent 3.0 features (pattern matching, abstracts)
• A bit of additional syntax
• Complete standard library
• various fixes and optimizations

Pattern matching

• Extractors:

	switch( stringValue ) {
	case _.toLowerCase() => "foo": ...
	case nospace(_) => x if( x != "" ): x;
	}
	
	function nospace(x:String) {
		return ~/[ \t\r\n]+/g.replace(x,"");
	}
	

• Allow to match null value

Abstract enums

	@:enum abstract A(String) {
		var X = "X";
		var Y = "Y";
		var Z = "Z";
	}
	

• Behave like an enum (type wise).
• Only a set of runtime values.
• No Enum reflection, no parameters

New Syntax

	var f = (expression : Type);
	

	// example
	Reflect.setField(obj,"name",(foo() : String));
	

• Ensures that the expression is of the given type.
• ECheckType in macros.

EnumValue.match

	myEnum.match(pattern)
	

	// example
	if( macroExpr.match({ expr : EConst(CIdent(_)) }) ) ...
	

• shorter version of the switch for quick check.
• can't capture values.

Std.instance

	function instance<T:{},S:T>( value : T, c : Class<S> ) : S;
	

	// example
	class A {}
	class B extends A {}
	class C {}
	...
	var a : A = new B();
	Std.instance(a,B); // ok
	Std.instance(a,C); // error
	

• optimized (no basic type support).
• to use for quick "downcast".

Compiler Cache Memory

• Report "Compiler caches takes too much memory"
• Add --display memory to dump cache size and module references
• Notice (and fix) various module leaks (pointer kept to old version of modules)
• Report "One single module takes 2 GB of memory" (oops!)
• A LOT of MyEnum.Value accesses
• Fixed it ! 200x memory reduction of this module
• Also speed up compilation !

Bytes API

• Goal of std : makes things easy, at low performance cost
• haxe.io.Bytes complete API : Int/UInt/8/16/24/32 accessors
• JS Typed Arrays API (slice view of underlying Bytes)

Unicode Support

• Haxe Strings are "array of chars"
• The definition of char is per-platform atm...
  • C++/Neko : uint8 (ISO/ANSI/etc.)
  • JS/Flash : uint16 (UCS2)
  • Java : either UCS2 or UTF16 (JVM dependent)
  • C# : UTF16
• ...it starts to be complicated

What is a String?

• At low level : a memory zone full of bytes
• The encoding is implicit !
• Storage of chars differ depending of encoding.

Various Encodings

	Char range	Bytes/char	Access
ANSI	0x00-0x7F	1	O(1)
ISO	0x00-0xFF	1	O(1)
UCS2	0x00-0xFFFF	2	O(1)
UTF8	0x00-0x7FFFFFFF	1-6	O(n)
UTF16	0x00-0xD7FF + 0xE000-0x10FFFF	2 (+2)	O(n)*

(*) : unless we ignore surrogate pairs

UTF8 for file storage / HTML (superset of ANSI)

UTF-16 in details

• 0x00 - 0xD7FF : same as UCS2
• 0xE000 - 0xFFFF : same as UCS2
• 0x10000 - 0x10FFFF : surrogate pairs
  • two 0xDXXXX chars
• 0xD800 - 0xDFFF : invalid code points
  • can still be produced by other encodings!
• Still with us?

What to do?

• provide haxe.Ucs2/Utf8/Utf16
  • + conversion functions
• ensure cross-platform conformity
• check performances
• most likely switch to UCS2 as default (3.4 ? 4.0 ?)
• tell us if you have better idea!

A few other things

• Allow @:build in macros.
• Move SPOD out of haxe.db (more on that later)
• Disable NekoVM bridge (better support for EReg/haxe.io.Process in macros)
• Work on Date (local/UTC time, etc.) : need your feedback!
• Global Optimization pass

Python target

Who?

• Simon Krajewski
• Jason O'Neil
• the compiler team (Hugh, Cauê, Bruno, Franco, Heinz)
• /me
• all other contributors (Dan Korostelev, Andy Li, etc.)

What?

• maintain haxe compiler
• and standard library
• and haxelib

What?

• a LOT of unit tests for cross platform
• handling ~100 issues per month
• support for HF partners
• make sure things get resolved (OpenFL/NME)
• provides documentation... (ehm)

New haxe.org

• Haxe : the cross platform toolkit
• Haxe Manual
  • complete language reference
  • advanced technical information
  • more to come:
    • how to write cross platform code
    • native interaction with the platform
    • etc.
• Use Cases
  • Games, Web, Mobile, Commandline, Cross platform, etc.
  • links to popular libs/tools
  • success stories
• Contribute!

Other HF Activities

• Sponsoring
  • HIDE
  • New Haxelib website
  • UFront
  • WWX
  • anything that helps Haxe!
• Organize / Promote
  • User groups
  • Services
  • Jobs
  • Success stories
• Something else?

Thank you!

And don't forget...

Done with http://github.com/ncannasse/hxslides