Re: J2ME Implementation of Lua?

["Kristofer Karlsson" <kristofer.karlsson@...>]

Hi, I am the developer of Kahlua, so my post may be biased.

As far as I know, Kahlua is currently the only pure Java port of Lua.
JavaLua is really just a wrapper to interface with standard Lua, which
means it won't work on J2ME.
Recently, Kahlua got full support for coroutines which means it now
has complete support of the lua core.
The only things that are missing now is a compiler and some of the
basic libraries.

The reason that some are missing are obvious: io and os don't have the
same correspondence in J2ME.
Others are simply tricky to do - String pattern matching / formatting.
(Though work is being done there too.)

If you decide to go for a full port yourself, perhaps Kahlua would be
an adequate starting point - I would personally welcome all useful
additions to it!

I would however still argue that Kahlua is useful already as it is,
since you rarely need to (or want to, given the input system!) type
Lua code directly on the mobile phone which means that you don't
really need a compiler built in.

Cheers,
Kristofer

On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 9:44 PM, Jeremy Irish <jeremy@groundspeak.com> wrote:
> Greetings,
>
>  Our new project at Wherigo.com implements Lua as part of our game engine. It currently runs on Pocket PC and on the Garmin Colorado. We have a small but growing list of authors creating real-world GPS-enabled games on the Wherigo platform.
>
>  We're at a crossroads. We're looking at porting Wherigo to Java since many mobile applications run Java. We dismissed the iPhone since they exclude any scripting languages as part of their accepted programs. Instead, we're looking at Android and phones like the Nokia N95 since they have GPS and support J2ME and don't have such restrictions.
>
>  The challenge is that Lua doesn't have a "real" port to Java. There have been some attempts at porting Lua to Java before (LuaJava, Kahlua, etc.) or at least attempts at providing an interop, but we're interested in a full port of Lua to Java. Is there any interest in the broader community to use Lua in a J2ME or Java environment?
>
>  Basically at this time I'm just gauging interest. If we can show a broader adoption of Lua in Java it would make sense to commit resources to doing a full port, especially if we can "pass on" the code to a strong community base to manage it once it is done. We'd also be looking to an advisory group to make sure that the code being generated has been adequately tested to ensure that the port implements Lua properly.
>
>  Thanks for your feedback! If you could also indicate what you would use the port for, if you have interest, it would help in the decision-making process.
>
>  Cheers,
>
>  Jeremy Irish
>  President & CEO, Groundspeak
>  http://www.groundspeak.com
>
>
>
>