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As most of you have noticed, the current distribution of Kepler (1.0) and its modules on LuaForge still use Lua 5.0. This is making life hard for those who get close to Lua, get the book and can't use those modules because they are still on 5.0.

We are working on the conversion of most of the modules and Kepler itself to Lua 5.1 and the results are already available on CVS. The current HEAD of Kepler modules consists in what will be Kepler 1.1 and already work on Unix/OSX.

Our current plans involve:

- Finish the Windows build for Kepler launchers and its modules
- Release the modules for Lua 5.1
- Activate the new site for Kepler 1.1 using Sputnik (a wiki using Kepler 1.1)
- Release Kepler 1.1 around July 2007

Particularly the LuaSOAP, LuaXML-RPC and LuaLDAP modules are still behind but it would be nice if someone could help with them so they can be used with Lua 5.1 too.

The Kepler project used to be developed by a closed team (mostly in Brazil) but we have opened the process in order to let everyone contribute in the same way as the original team.

For those interested, all activities on Kepler are happening on its mailing list
http://luaforge.net/mail/?group_id=104

The list used to have a very low traffic, but the recent changes in the group dynamics are resulting in a increased list activity with a lot more of detailed conversations than before since there are no more conversations outside the list.

All This has resulted in a big boost on new development, but a lag on the Windows version of the modules due to the current distribution of Windows/Unix developers on the list.

If someone would like to help us finishing Kepler 1.1 we are needing more Windows developers with experience in nmake. The current makefiles for Visual Studio 2005 Express are still not ready for distribution, but they already compile the modules for Lua 5.1.

There is a Unix snapshot for Kepler 1.1 on
http://www.keplerproject.org/kepler-1.1-snapshot-20070420-1741.tar.gz
and with this snapshot the power trio (./configure, make, sudo make install) should work without much hassle on Linux and Mac OSX.

Note, that the delay on Windows builds did not stopped the team. There is already movement on the Kepler 1.2 front, involving both Orbit (a MVC metaphor for Kepler) and a new architecture for launchers based on WSAPI (think Python's WSGI or Ruby's Racks). Both are being discussed in the Kepler list and the new wiki.

Although things are still maturing, there is already a blog developed with Orbit running over WSAPI, which proves the architecture proposal for Kepler 1.2. As a comparision, Sputnik still uses Lua Pages and CGILua over SAPI launchers (aka Kepler 1.1).

As a related information, LuaRocks (a build/deploy/version system for Lua modules) is also getting momentum and for those interested in it the corresponding list is at
http://luaforge.net/mail/?group_id=220

Kepler 1.1 is serving as a test bed for LuaRocks ideas and Kepler 1.2 will probably use the first version of LuaRocks. Just keep in mind that LuaRocks is not related to Kepler in any way, this closeness is just a matter of the teams overlapping on both projects.

When LuaRocks gets ready, Kepler will be one example of an application that uses LuaRocks, as much as a game or an IDE could use LuaRocks in order to organize its internal modules use.

Thanks in advance for any help and feedback on Kepler and LuaRocks.

André