Re: Lua 5.0 and 5.1 together

["Andre Carregal" <carregal@...>]

> > Diego Nehab wrote:
> > As for not needing the support of the authors, this would force us to
> > patch the lua.c and/or loadlib.c. Since the 5.1.1 has not yet been released...

> John Belmonte wrote:
> Patching Lua to take care of distribution details is not a big deal, we
> already do it for other things (e.g. patching luaconf.h to add /usr/...
> variants to search paths).  Only one person need do the work and we can
> then share the patch.  I'll take a stab at it this weekend.

While this is true, another option to consider is one similar to Compat-5.1.

Compat has been used both for upward compatibility and for exercising the  new package model during the 5.1 cycle. A similar approach (Compat-5.2? 6.0?) could be used to implement and exercise incoming novelties for the next version of Lua to be used by Lua 5.1 users.

As long as the delta does not imply parsing differences or a unmappable C API, we should be able to offer it through the development of the next version of Lua.

We can tell that the experience of being able to port modules to Lua 5.1 in a series of smaller steps was an interesting one. The delta from Compat R5 to Lua 5.1 is a lot smaller than Lua 5.0 to Lua 5.1 and that may appeal to those who are not sure about the jump.

Andre