Re: Suggestion

[Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo <lhf@...>]

>One thing that I know I've run into before is "What is the state of
>Lua?"  By looking at Lua.org, there's no clear indicator what the
>current version of Lua is, what the next version is, what it looks like,
>etc.  For example, the download page mentions 4.0, but no mention of the
>patches and there's no talk at all about 4.1 other than a reference that
>it was pulled in favor of 5.0?

The current version is clearly mentioned in the download page: it's 4.0.
Work versions are just this: snapshots of what we've working on. They are
not at all official in any sense, and so do not deserve any special mention.

If the work versions are a source of noise, then perhaps we should stop
releasing them. I understand that such noise may do more harm than the
good that releasing work version might do.

>A page on lua.org with "Lua Status" broke up into Previous Release,
>Current Release and Patches, and Future Releases with the information
>that's been posted about thoughts for upcoming versions would probably
>help a lot of people (or, at least, me =) ) understand where Lua has
>been and where it's going without reading old magazine articles and a
>bunch of mailing list archives.

This is very hard to keep up to date. Lua releases are by nature infrequent.

Bottom line: for all purposes, there's only one official version of Lua, the
current one, and this is 4.0 right now. The next version is going to be 5.0,
and should be out still during 2002. An alpha version should be out in a month
or so. Perhaps this should be mentioned in the FAQ, which by the way is in
desperate need of update (but that is a topic for a separate message).
--lhf