Re: WxLua and require

[Diego Nehab <diego@...>]

Hi,

> Must you always return 1? wxLua doesn't use the
> luaL_openlib(L, "ran2", ran2_func, 1) method of creating
> the lib since it's a little more complicated and we have
> to worry about setting up metatables for tracking objects.
> I suppose that I could just push the global "wx" table we
> create onto the stack after wxLua does it's thing and
> nobody would be any the wiser right?

You can still setup a bunch of stuff before (or after)
calling luaL_openlib. Unless you have a good reason not to
use it, I would suggest you do. Makes your code easier for
people to understand later. And saves you the trouble of
writing the loop yourself. :) But yes, you are free not to
use it, create your own namespace table and return it.

About the return, users will want to write a line like this:

    local wx = require"wx"

The call to require() returns what or your function returns,
what it finds in package.loaded["wx"] (if your function
returns something, require will store it in package.loaded
too), or it returns true otherwise.

Both luaL_openlib and module create a namespace and store it
in package.loaded. So you don't actually have to return
anything if you use them. But since the table was there, 
I decided to return it.

> Just to be sure, if I understand the code in
> lua/src/loadlib.c, Lua's require takes "require"XXX"" and
> looks for the C function "luaopen_XXX" in the library and
> runs it. You have to name the "-shared" library XXX.so for
> lua to find and you also need "-fpic" for the
> position-independent code in the library. This last bit
> would have certainly caused me a headache as I wouldn't
> have thought to do that.

It's in the Wiki. Instructions to build libraries in pretty
much every type of machine.

> Thanks again, I'll give it a shot later this week, when
> the SourceForge CVS is back up :(

It will be great to start using it.

[]s,
Diego.