Kepler 1.1 Status

[Andre Carregal <carregal@...>]

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