Lua/C++ binding library showdown: who's the best?

[Tyler Olsen <roots@...>]

For a good while now, I've been trying to decide on which Lua/C++ 
binding library would be best for my purposes. Unfortunately I've been 
unable to find an easy, clean, and unbiased comparison of the several 
different binding libraries that are out there. I asked on the GameDev 
forums before here:

http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=288753

But the general response I got from all that was "try a few out and see 
what you like best". While this might work for some people, it can be a 
real pain in the neck to have to learn multiple binding APIs just to see 
which one you like the best, and furthermore without a decent amount of 
time spent hacking around on each you won't get the full picture of the 
advantages and disadvantages of each library.



Therefore, I would like to open a discussion of Lua/C++ binding 
libraries with the Lua community. I think a simple pros/cons list for 
each binding library would be the best way to go about this because a 
verbose discussion can become overwhelming. Heck, maybe we could even 
put the results on the Lua wiki if this goes well. :) I believe the 
following criteria to be the most important in making this decision 
(note that there may be more I don't list here):

- Portablity of code
- Compilation complexity
- Binding library dependencies (like boost)
- Run-time complexity (both time and area)
- Ease of use/programmability
- Sufficient documentation
- Actively under development, or at a final, stable release



From what I've researched so far, LuaBind and tolua++ seem to be the 
two major players to me. I have not yet found the time to look into 
either too seriously, so I'm hoping some seasoned users of each library 
can post their thoughts, as well as those of other libraries. Thanks!


- Tyler Olsen

---------------------
Hero of Allarost :: a FOSS role-playing game for *NIX, *BSD, MacOS X, 
and Windows
http://www.allacrost.org/