Re: NetBSD as a Lua-friendly environment (Re: Lua-friendly OSes)

[Marc Balmer <marc@...>]

Am 01.11.11 21:04, schrieb Alex:

> Is the Lua-in-Kernel project being developed only for NetBSD or also
> for Linux? I am aware that it was initially developed for Linux, but
> now I hear talking about NetBSD only. Has is been dropped on Linux?

Originally, Lourival Neto did the Lunatik project for Linux, a Lua in
the Linux kernel.  He then ported it to NetBSD during a 2010 GSoC
project, which I mentored.

His GSoC project showed that it is possible to have a Lua interpreter in
the kernel.  The project, however, lacked a lot of infrastructure.

The "Kernel mode Lua" project is a clean room implementation of the
missing infrastructure, done entirely by myself, but taking some of the
ideas of Lourival's project.  Most notably, I took from that project the
tweaks to compile Lua in the kernel environment.

I added the lua(4) device driver (aka the infrastructure needed to
create and control Lua states in the kernel and how to communicate with
them, providing a way for 'require' in the kernel and to define who Lua
bindings work as kernel modules).  I also added a userland command,
luactl(8) to interact with lua(4) from the commandline.

I presented my work (which has to be understood as work in progress)
during the Lua Workshop 2011 in Frick, and I will present it during
bsd_day(2011) in Bratislava and FOSDEM 2012 in Brussels.

I only develop this for NetBSD, Linux is not on my radar.

> 
> By the way, what is the current state of the project both on Linux and
> NetBSD? What bindings are already available?

I have bindings for several kernel subsystems, like pmf.  I also have
some drivers that create Lua states, register them, and use Lua
functions, if provided by the user.

Some folks have expressed interest in lua(4) for e.g. npf.

> 
> Alex
> 

- Marc