Re: table library changes (was Re: table.new in 5.3?)

[Paul Merrell <marbux@...>]

On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 10:17 AM, Dirk Laurie <dirk.laurie@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2013/11/26 Coda Highland <chighland@gmail.com>:

>> Lua's claim to fame is embedding itself into another application with
>> functionality implemented in C exposed by the host. Implementing it in
>> C is no less dogfooding than implementing it in Lua.
>
> Those of us who work on Unix-like operating systems tend to
> forget that the availability of a high-quality C compiler almost
> routinely installed at no charge is not a basic human right.
> There are people in the rest of the world who actually download
> precompiled Lua interpreters instead of compiling it from source.
>
> So, while I personally just love compiling little C libraries for Lua,
> I have some sympathy for those that would prefer not to.

Lua as a an embedded script interpreter in a C or C++ host app for use
in extending the host app leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to
add-on C libraries. Hopefully much of this problem will go away when
LuaDist is ready for prime-time and ready to be embedded along with
Lua on a variety of host operating systems and platforms.

But the complexities of obtaining and installing both scripts and C
libraries they depend on is too much to expect from lay users who just
want to execute scripts if they are expected to compile the C
libraries too. For them, libraries written in Lua are far easier to
handle.

My 2 cents,

Paul


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