Cross-platform way to handle cmd in hxml

1

I want to have haxe run a command after it has compiled it. But even if I run haxe from, say, git bash it still uses the standard windows shell to run any commands specified in the .hxml (which makes sense). Unfortunately the Windows command-line doesn’t like the unix slashes, at least not when specifying executable.

Note that this isn’t a problem with running js and probably not with other scripting languages (it’s ultimately up to the interpreter itself, which is going to be smart) so this works linux, windows, mac:

-cmd node bin/tests.js

However if I want to run something that has been build as a binary executable (using cpp or hl + cl) it won’t work cross-platform:

-cmd ./bin/tests/RunTests (works in unixen)
-cmd .\\bin\\tests\\RunTests (works in Windows)

I know there are other workarounds if I use wrappers, etc. but is there a simple way just through editing the hxml to handle both types of slashes? Or to switch by platform? I see some really old examples of using macros to accomplish this but again involves adding entire files and doesn’t work for me in haxe 4.

2

Set the COMSPEC (or ComSpec) environment variable to the path of GitBash or whatever it is you want Windows to use as your command line when it runs system commands.

4

I don’t want devs to have to set an environment variable just to use this and I don’t want git bash to be a requirement, particularly when I’m not using any fancy shell features, I’m simply calling an executable. The only requirement should be the haxe compiler.

5

I hit a similar problem, this seems to work:

-cmd ./bin/tests
-cmd RunTests

something like that should work, this is what im using:

-cmd cd build/android
-cmd gradlew build -x lint

Ian

1 Like
6

I think you meant to include a cd in the first one. That does work in Windows (but so does the way I said earlier, using \ instead of /), but doesn’t work in mac or linux. If I include ./ then it works in linux and mac but not Windows. I also have other reasons for wanting to select by os than just the slashes issue.

7

You might be able to simply use --cwd instead of -cmd cd.

8

Right, gotcha, i thought it was just a slash issue

9

why not write a hx file which does what you want and call it with:

-cmd haxe -main AfterCompile --interp

1 Like
10

Slightly related, I’ve adapted a haxex script that allows you easily execute haxe as a shell script. Check it out here: haxex, a short shell script that can be used so you have Haxe shell scripting · GitHub

11

I was hoping to avoid having to do that, but at this point I think that’s the only reliable way to do it right. I’ll just make a general purpose class that does nothing but call an arbitrary executable with whatever command-line arguments.

12

Doesn’t solve the problem. Note what I said about ./