RE: Hello to the list!

[Jim Jackl-Mochel <jmochel@...>]

Here at Foliage we used Lua as the testing script language for a medium sized project. 
(6 veteran engineers for 6 months - 4 Developers/2 QA) . It was easy to integrate into 
a client server environment and took only two days to create the project specific LUA 
library calls (112 Functions ) and most of the time was spent getting the error handling 
scheme to work (in other words: LUA was not the bottleneck).

We used LUA to generate full coverage testing scripts (High, Low, and bogus parameter calls ) and 
short tours system abuse scripts. The code generated the scripts based on function descriptions in 
a table and then executed the scripts in order. 

It is very stable and the move from LUA 2.X to 3.0 was just a recompile. The only problem we had was that
LUA represented all reals as floats rather than doubles. It was trivial to fix (one day of discovery, a few hours of testing) .

> But which one ? As we had our own experiences and  ideas with that, we
> have some strong demands  to this kind of languages.  This led  to the
> situation  now  that  in  our   opinion, all   the  standard extension
> languages (tcl, perl,python,slang,java,scheme)  do not  fulfill one of
> the following: 
> 
> * small, compact language kernel which is _absolutely portable and stable_

I have gotten it work on QNX, Linux, NT and Win95. 

> * easy syntax - we want that our project partners who are engineers not 
>   experienced in informatics to be able to understand and to write scripts

Can't comment too much. Our customers (the people we produced the system for) were able 
to use the scripts but much preferred GUI interfaces anyway.

> * license conditions which allow flexible use in application projects

We never released the testing engine for commercial use. 

> * C code integration not by generated interface stubs but by calling 
>   register methods from C.

Yes and no. To do meaningful work (AFAIK) you have to produce a simple set of C wrappers 
around your own functions and register those. Very simple and it can be automated. See ToLUA or
SWIG tools.

> * code development policy with strong commitment to interface stability

Amen ! Seems to be answered by LUA so far !

Good Luck and I hope this helps.
     Jim Jackl-Mochel