Re: Lua OS!

[Michal Kolodziejczyk <miko@...>]

On 18.12.2009 15:41, Jorge wrote:
> Now that there is a lot of traffic on the list on grave issues, and the
> year is finishing, i'll post this as the chances of going unnoticed are
> high.

Nope ;)

> What would an OS patterned after Lua look like? I'm thinking on the same
> relationship UNIX and C have. Thus, 

I did wonder how would luandroid look like... I mean android with lua
instead of java/dalvik (and with underlying linux kernel). That would be
the task...

> - It must be mostly written in Lua.
> 
> - It must run everywhere Lua runs. 

OS "by definition" interfaces with hardware (access to storage, display,
input devices), so it would be hard to implement (unless you are
designig "virtual OS").

> - The main concepts should be Lua's (for example, instead of "everything
> is a file handle" we would have "everything is a table").

Lua is a dynamic (not strongly typed) language, so you would need to
write lots of check to see if the parameters are still valid...

> - Of course, it will run Lua programs.
> 
> - The spirit must be the same: compact, elegant, portable, embeddable,
> extensible, fast. 
> 
> 
> Ideas?

Well, I can see 2 different ways:
- reimplement some already existing OS (which is probably C biased)
- design something completely new (in Lua spirit, but quite different
than anything we know)

Anyways, it is going to be hard... You could start playing with FUSE to
write a filesystem driver in lua.

Regards