Re: LuaJIT and Lua 5.2?

[Miles Bader <miles@...>]

Duncan Cross <duncan.cross@gmail.com> writes:
>> from the changelog I see that LuaJIT incorporated some features of Lua
>> 5.2, but does that mean it incorporated all changes of Lua 5.2 or just
>> selected ones?
>
> A few selected ones, and I think they have to be specially enabled
> when you compile somehow.
>
> (Do not hold out for a fully 5.2-compatible version of LuaJIT, if you
> are thinking of it. Mike Pall has made it clear that he dislikes and
> disagrees with many of the choices made by the Lua team for this
> version, and has no intention of moving away from a primarily
> 5.1-based LuaJIT.)

I think that's overstating things.

The changes from Lua 5.1 to 5.2 involve a distinct set of features.

Mike's expressed displeasure with some of them (e.g. the details of
the 5.2 bit library), and approved of others (e.g., "goto").
I suspect luajit will likely over time add various 5.2 features as
time and funding allow (and as clients request, of course).

Whether it will ever support _all_ of them, I dunno, but as
programmer, I find it more useful to think in terms of specific
features I want to use anyway, not as a simplistic "5.1 vs 5.2".

[I've never used _any_ Lua bit library, so I'm not so concerned which
one is available; if I did use one, I'd probably try to remain
portable by just writing to the common subset of (and as they have
different names, it's probably not to hard to do a bit of emulation).]

-Miles

-- 
Cat is power.  Cat is peace.