Re: Why nobody talks about Lua

Subject: Re: Why nobody talks about Lua
From: Peter Drahos &lt;drahosp@ ... &gt;
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2010 21:33:57 +0100

On Feb 16, 2010, at 8:14 PM, Ryan Pusztai wrote:

On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 2:05 PM, Alex Combas <alex.combas@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 9:06 AM, Stuart P. Bentley <stuart@testtrack4.com> wrote:
I've found the Lua for Windows distribution to be magnificent for this. Its stated goal is to be a "batteries included" distribution of Lua, and I've found that to be pretty accurate (although IUP, CD, IM, LuaGL and LuaSocket are the only batteries I ever need). Now what we need is a Debian metapackage so we can have the equivalent on Ubuntu...

I think the reason there isn't a giant single meta Lua package is likely an idealogical difference between Windows and Linux.

You see, Windows users know that Windows is a huge mess and don't mind throwing everything into one big directory, where as in Linux

the users and packagers are quite picky and insist that everything be packaged properly in its own neat little compartment.

So if you were to create a single giant meta Lua package with batteries included it would likely never get accepted into Debian.

I do agree with you though, I wish there was 1 giant meta-Lua package for Linux. to hell with fussy Linux packaging standards :)

I agree! We need it. I wish I knew anything about packaging. Anybody able to help in this area?

LuaDist[1] aims towards this goal with its planned binary distribution packages for Mac/Linux/Unix/Windows/... with Socket, IUP, LFS, CD, IM and LuaSocket included by default. However we are still in the development phase and working towards providing seamless "from-source" experience. Most of the packages can be compiled if you are willing to get your hands little dirty[2]. If you do not want to use the package manager/installer you can always grab the CMake-fied module sources[3] directly and build your own Lua distro[4].