Re: IPhone Wax

["E. Wing" <ewmailing@...>]

On 10/1/09, Benjamin Tolputt <btolputt@bigpond.net.au> wrote:
> Peter Cawley wrote:
>> I'm not an iPhone user or developer (Android for me), but I was under
>> the impression that Apple had no problems with a VM, as long as the
>> end-user couldn't write applications for the VM, and thus sidestep
>> their application approval process.
>>
>
> Actually, that's correct. The issue Apple has is that they have such
> strict (draconian!) control over their App Store application approvals
> that adding a VM accessible to the public could mean that people could
> run applications on their phone that violated their safety (and public
> relations) standards. If the application could download & run scripts
> from the net (or otherwise be installed onto the standard iPhone), an
> entire suite of unsafe, unsavoury, and (more importantly) uncontrolled
> by Apple functionality could be made available to the public.
>
> So long as the application is not extendable by script, it appears Apple
> is OK with Lua (I believe there are already some Lua-based apps in the
> App Store). It's not VM's Apple has issues with, it is the capability of
> an application to skirt around the central control Apple has over what
> can & can't make it onto the iPhone.
>

Yes, there are some apps already on the store that use Lua. However,
there are general documented cases where Apple is inconsistent about
applying the rules. And the rules laid out in the SDK license terms
are ambiguous at best with the respect to VMs.


So for the paranoid, I've been working with Robert Jakabosky to get
llvm-lua working on iPhone to precompile down lua scripts into native
code. We actually got it working a few weeks ago, but I need to
document it, put some examples together, and think about how to clean
up the process a bit to make it easier to use. I've been side tracked
recently and haven't had time to do this. I'm hoping maybe next week
I'll get something preliminary posted.

Meanwhile, anybody know how Wax does it's bridging? Building a
new/updated LuaObjCBridge has been sitting in my todo pile forever.
For Mac, the plan was to copy MacRuby and use libffi and Apple's
BridgeSupport. I don't think iPhone has either of these available, so
I was wondering what the trick is. And would Wax work for Mac?

Thanks,
Eric