Re: Lua Common Core Alliance?

[Florian Weimer <fw@...>]

* Patrick Mc:

> There are other languages that take a similar approach to
> compatibility such as Objective Lua. Could I suggest that you and
> other like minded individuals form some sort of common core alliance
> like what Debian did:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCC_Alliance

I'm not sure if this is a good model.

> There are always many posts to the list from people who want to have
> things changed in the language(exceptions, nil, #, local vs global) if
> there was some sort of ground rules laid out and perhaps some sort of
> intermediary API then people could add or remove features while still
> retaining commonality.

I don't think this will work.  Some of the proposed changes are not
restricted to the surface syntax.

> If these other languages built all their libraries in Lua or C with
> the C API then we could all benefit from their work.

On the other hand, I do believe that Lua could benefit from a small
set of quasi-standard types (or object behaviors).  Some time ago, I
posted a list (see <http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2010-03/msg00423.html>),
and here it is again:

  - mutable byte arrays
  - arbitary-precision integers
  - I/O handles (multiple different kinds on some platforms)
  - UTF-16 strings (mainly for path names on Windows)
  - a NULL value for use in SQL and JSON, distinct from nil
  - perhaps decimal floating point numbers

Those would come with a stable C API so that C libraries could use
these types, too.

The expectation is that these types would facilitate efficient
communication between libraries from different sources.

Sorry for hijacking your thread, but that's what I thought about when
I saw the subject line.