Re: IPhone Wax

["Robert G. Jakabosky" <bobby@...>]

On Thursday 01, E. Wing wrote:
> 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.

For anyone that is interested in try to use llvm-lua to static compile Lua 
script for the iPhone checkout the latest SVN trunk revision of llvm-lua (you 
will also need LLVM 2.6 which is still in pre-release stage).  I was going to 
roll a new release of llvm-lua once LLVM 2.6 was officially released but they 
keep bumping the release date (new date is now "TBD"), atleast the 2.6 API is 
frozen so I don't have to worry about incompatible changes, so I might just 
release anyways.

Also the current revision of llvm-lua now has CMake build files as an 
alternative to the old Makefiles.

> 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?

I looked over the wax code really quickly at:
http://github.com/probablycorey/wax

It looks like it would be possible to swap out the normal Lua vm core with the 
modified version from llvm-lua.  Maybe the wax author would be interested in 
using llvm-lua.  We can atleast clone the git repository for now.

I might not have much time to work on this until after Oct. 7.


-- 
Robert G. Jakabosky