Re: package proposal

[Thatcher Ulrich <tu@...>]

On Sep 18, 2004 at 10:42 +1000, David Burgess wrote:
> 
> Q 1) If I have mylib.lua and mylib.dll, then "require'mylib'" will
> load the DLL first. (I like this). What was the thinking behing
> this?

This is kind of a nitpick, but that's actually the only feature of the
proposal I don't like at first glance.  It's not a huge problem, but
for the pattern of a Lua wrapper around a C module, it means the DLL
must have a different base name than the Lua wrapper.  E.g.:

SDL.lua:
----
module"SDL"

assert(require "gluahost")
assert(gluahost.load("SDL_dll"))	-- different name!

function self_test()
	 -- ... etc ...
end
-- ... possibly other helper stuff ...
----

I think it would be more convenient for this case if .lua files got
loaded first, so the binary file could share the same base name as the
wrapper.  This would also allow modules to be extended after-the-fact
using a Lua wrapper.

On the other hand, the DLL name can always be mangled.

Overall, I'm hugely in favor of the proposal.

-- 
Thatcher Ulrich
http://tulrich.com