Setup

Overview

Haxall is an open source framework that includes the reference implementation of Xeto. It provides a suite of command line tools for working with Xeto. Haxall is written in the Fantom programming language which allows the Xeto tools to run with either NodeJS or Java.

Install for Java

Follow the setup instructions from Haxall docs:

1. Install Java on your system

2. Download and unzip the last release from GitHub

3. Run 'xeto version' to verify install

   bin/xeto version
   

Install for NodeJS

Install @haxall/haxall using npm as follows:

1. Install '@haxall/haxall' using npm (if you get a permission error on Unix then run via sudo)

   npm i -g @haxall/haxall
   

2. Run 'xeto version' to verify install

   xeto version
   

See NPM docs on package.json bin scripts for additional details.

Env Path

The Haxall tools all rely on a search path used to find Xeto libraries. The path is composed of a list of one or more directories on the local file system which is searched from beginning to end. The first directory is called the workDir and it is the default location to create and install new libs. The last directory in the path is called the homeDir and is always where you installed Haxall.

The workDir and path are configured based on your current working directory by walking up the path looking for one of the following files to mark the root of your workDir:

1. 'xeto.props' - explicit configuration for Xeto
2. 'fan.props' - use standard Fantom path behavior
3. '.git' - assume you are developing new libs with Git version control
4. Fallback is to assume workDir is same as homeDir (where you installed Haxall)

You can configure additional directories in your search path by adding the 'path' line to your "xeto.props" file. The value is a list of directories separated by a semicolon (note we do not use colon even on Unix). You can use "../" to specify a directory relative to the workDir.

Example "xeto.props":

path=/work/project-libs;/work/global-libs

You can debug your environment setup using the 'xeto version' command:

/work/acme-lib> xeto version

...

xeto.version:    3.1.12
xeto.mode:       xeto.props
xeto.workDir:    /work/acme-libs
xeto.homeDir:    /work/haxall-home
xeto.installDir: /work/acme-libs
xeto.path:
  /work/acme-libs
  /work/project-libs
  /work/global-libs
  /work/haxall-home

We always search the path looking for source and xetolib files according to the naming convention:

{dir}/src/xeto/{lib-name}/
{dir}/lib/xeto/{lib-name}/

So in the above example we would search the following directories for a library named "acme.templates":

/work/acme-libs/src/xeto/acme.templates/
/work/acme-libs/lib/xeto/acme.templates/
/work/project-libs/src/xeto/acme.templates/
/work/project-libs/lib/xeto/acme.templates/
/work/global-libs/src/xeto/acme.templates/
/work/global-libs/lib/xeto/acme.templates/
/work/haxall-home/src/xeto/acme.templates/
/work/haxall-home/lib/xeto/acme.templates/