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Somewhere the thread changed course from not just Ruby vs Lua
to that reliable old performer, Lua's lack of "batteries".
I don't think anybody seriously means "like Python." Python is
way past "batteries included". It's reached the stage of "any old
junk repackaged". I've just asked Ubuntu's package manager how many
packages have "python" and "binding" in their names.
Python, 342.
Ruby, 101.
Perl, 81.
Lua, 13. None of which I have actually installed.
I can think of several reasons.
1. Lua is not as pervasive as the others.
2. It's quite easy in Lua (and trivial in LuaJIT) to write bindings for
just the few routines from a large C library that you actually need.
3. Lua fans don't like taking code someone else wrote on trust. Core
Lua is OK, it goes through several rc versions, we all had a chance
to put it through its paces. But not just anything.
Do we really need another library bank? We have luarocks.
It's a pons asinorum. Packaging something as a rock is just tricky
enough to eliminate the nine-day wonders and let through only
those authors with a little staying power.
Personally, I find that of the dozens of Lua 5.1 non-rocks packages
that I installed and tried, only four (lfs, lpeg and two others) made it
to my 5.2 library. And I'm pretty sure lfs and lpeg are 5.2 rocks too
by now.
What we do need is something like Amazon's user review
system. I need say a json reader, the LuaWiki lists several and
it's really hard to figure out which to try first. It's not going be the
same for everyone. But with a user review system I can see
which product gets a good rating from people with my sort of
setup.
Isn't it just a question of installing the right open-source
package on say lua-users.org and waiting for us Lua users
to provide the input?