But how does it work?

[skycatminepokie]

Hello! I'm looking at learning and using Haxe, but I need a use case, such as continuing my modding in it. I've got a couple of questions before I start though.

1. Does everything have to be interned manually? I see some stuff in draft that doesn't seem to be used, but I'm guessing that's generated from mappings.
2. What are the limitations? Is it likely to support 1.20.5+ (aka Java 21)?
3. Mappings - I'm a Yarn user. How much work/knowledge would it take for me to fork a yarn version (ballpark)? Gradle is magic to me, and I'm just looking into Haxe, but I know Java well.
4. In summary, I can tell there's a lot more required to this than a bunch of interns, but I can't seem to pinpoint why. Where can I start my search for understanding?

Thank you!
-skycat

[EliteMasterEric]

Hey there, I greatly appreciate your interest in this project!

Does everything have to be interned manually? I see some stuff in draft that doesn't seem to be used, but I'm guessing that's generated from mappings.

Not everything has to utilize externs. Haxe automatically generates externs from a JAR for you, and you can view these using the --dump argument (this creates a dump folder containing the generated files). Sometimes there is an issue, in which case I provide a manual correction by creating a Haxe class definition using the extern keyword and the @:native annotation, then redefine the variables and functions from that class.

What are the limitations? Is it likely to support 1.20.5+ (aka Java 21)?

I got Java 21 working, on both Fabric and Forge. See the develop branch (which has recent updates, as opposed to master where I last published about 9 months ago).

Mappings - I'm a Yarn user. How much work/knowledge would it take for me to fork a yarn version (ballpark)? Gradle is magic to me, and I'm just looking into Haxe, but I know Java well.

PickHaxe defaults to using ParchmentMC, an augmented MojMaps which provides parameter names and JavaDocs, falling back to MojMaps as needed. You can also use --mappings which technically allows yarn and mcp as values, but I haven't tested this in a long time and any of my custom externs which don't match would need to be manually edited to support Yarn as well (and I'm not certain how I'd handle classes that are in a different location in Yarn without a bunch of redundant mappings!).

In summary, I can tell there's a lot more required to this than a bunch of interns, but I can't seem to pinpoint why. Where can I start my search for understanding?

There is still a lot more to do in terms of creating good example projects and properly filling in the gaps, but the place to look is the sample projects, available to download using pickhaxe template or from this repo.

[skycatminepokie]

Awesome, thank you for the reply! As you can see, I probably won't be helpful for a while, but I'll be considering it. Thanks again!

[EliteMasterEric]

By the way, if you wanted to learn MojMaps instead, you can check out mappings lookup sites (like mappings.dev or wagyourtail ). Fabric Loom also has a command to automatically migrate an existing Java project between mappings, see this tutorial.