Re: Features you would like to see

[Niklas Frykholm <niklas@...>]

> yes, we use C++ preprocessor for this purpose, but it is very hard to
> debug such code, it would be much easier to have this function
> implemented in Lua.
>   
I added #ifdef functionality it to my project using token filters

   See http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2007-05/msg00176.html

It is easy to do and works well.
> But, actually, the main feature we need - it's Edit & Continue, it
> would be orders of magnitude easier to debug programs with it.
>   
Getting Edit & Continue to work in a Lua project is not that difficult.

All you have to do to reload a file is to run "dofile" instead of 
"require" on the file. If you want to reload all your files, just clear 
the require cache

   package.loaded = {}

and run your startup file again. You also need to take some care when 
writing your lua files so that they are "reentrant" and behave nicely 
when reloaded, i.e., instead of writing your class definitions like this:

   Car = {}
   function Car:run()
      ...
   end

Write:

   Car = Car or {}
   function Car:run()
      ...
   end

Now if you reload the file, the old Car-class will be retained (so 
objects keep the right metaclass), but the function definitions in the 
Car class will be updated.

// Niklas