  Based on a homogeneous set of X-ray, infrared and ultraviolet observations
from Chandra, Spitzer, GALEX and 2MASS archives, we study populations of
high-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs) in a sample of 29 nearby star-forming galaxies
and their relation with the star formation rate (SFR). In agreement with
previous results, we find that HMXBs are a good tracer of the recent star
formation activity in the host galaxy and their collective luminosity and
number scale with the SFR, in particular, Lx~2.6 10^{39} SFR. However, the
scaling relations still bear a rather large dispersion of ~0.4 dex, which we
believe is of a physical origin. We present the catalog of 1057 X-ray sources
detected within the $D25$ ellipse for galaxies of our sample and construct the
average X-ray luminosity function (XLF) of HMXBs with substantially improved
statistical accuracy and better control of systematic effects than achieved in
previous studies. The XLF follows a power law with slope of 1.6 in the
logLx~35-40 luminosity range with a moderately significant evidence for a break
or cut-off at Lx~10^{40} erg/s. As before, we did not find any features at the
Eddington limit for a neutron star or a stellar mass black hole. We discuss
implications of our results for the theory of binary evolution. In particular
we estimate the fraction of compact objects that once upon their lifetime
experienced an X-ray active phase powered by accretion from a high mass
companion and obtain a rather large number, fx~0.2 (0.1 Myr/tau_x) (tau_x is
the life time of the X-ray active phase). This is ~4 orders of magnitude more
frequent than in LMXBs. We also derive constrains on the mass distribution of
the secondary star in HMXBs.
