Re: [ANN] luamake

[steve donovan <steve.j.donovan@...>]

On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 12:17 AM, Wesley Smith <wesley.hoke@gmail.com> wrote:
> hi list,
> I'm releasing luamake, a purely Lua build tool (except for the
> LuaFileSystem dependency, which is included).  This is an OSX and
> Linux only system as of now.  If you're on Windows, all I can say is
> sorry, but I have no plans of adding windows.

This is obviously an idea that wants to happen (and keep happening!).
The autoconfig part of luamake is particularly interesting.

http://lua-users.org/wiki/LuaBuildSystems

The distinctions are:
  - does not require make (i.e. does dependencies in-house) like Bou
and PrimeMover
  - generates make files (like Hamster and premake)
  - integrated into a package manager (LuaRocks, LuaDist)

But the main difference of interest is declarative versus imperative.
Luamake seems to be declarative, like LuaRocks, whereas something like
Hamster (basically Lua SCons) is mostly declarative but can be used
imperatively.

The trouble with purely declarative schemes is handling those odd
little cases where a bit of programming makes life easier.

How does luamake handle the awkward cases?

What I like about the LuaRocks build system is that it has flexible
backends (currently, builtin, make and CMake) - and it understands
that different animal, the Microsoft C compiler.

If a new build system is available as a rock, then LuaRocks can handle
the extra dependency transparently.

steve d.