clax — the Clax V2 transpiler

clax transpiles Clax (.cx) — a small C-with-classes language — to plain C. It implements the object model described in Clax-Specification-V2.md: ::, new/delete, this, Object, typeof, clone, callable (methods as callbacks), NULL safety, and a generated shared runtime. A bundled standard library (system/*.cx) provides String, DynamicArray*, HashTable*, and friends.

Build & install

./configure              # or: ./configure --prefix=$HOME/.local
make
sudo make install

This installs:

Path	Contents
<bindir>/clax	the transpiler
<bindir>/clax_lint	symlink to clax; lint-only mode
<datadir>/clax/system/	standard library (*.cx)
<docdir>/	the language specification
<mandir>/man1/clax.1	man page

Defaults follow the GNU layout (prefix=/usr/local). Override any directory:

./configure --prefix=/usr --datadir=/usr/share --mandir=/usr/share/man

Honoured variables (flags or environment): CC, CFLAGS, LDFLAGS. Staged installs work via DESTDIR:

make DESTDIR=/tmp/stage install

Other make targets

• make examples — transpile + compile examples/project (no external deps).
• make examples-glfw — build examples/glfw_project (needs glfw3 via pkg-config).
• make examples-sdl2 — build examples/sdl2_project (needs sdl2 via pkg-config).
• make check — lint the bundled example as a smoke test.
• make uninstall, make clean, make distclean.

The bundled example projects live under examples/.

Usage

clax --init-project ~/myapp     # scaffold a new project
cd ~/myapp && ./build.sh        # build.sh is pre-wired to the installed system/ lib

# starter projects for graphics (each scaffolds main.cx + Button.cx + a
# pkg-config build.sh; needs the matching dev libraries installed):
clax --init-sdl2-project ~/mygame   # SDL2
clax --init-glfw-project ~/mygl     # GLFW + OpenGL

# or transpile an existing project directly:
clax --include=/usr/local/share/clax/system ./project
cc -O2 -o program project/generated_c/*.c

See man clax for the full option list.

Damir Šijaković (c) 2026.