Re: Lua library bank? (Was: Ruby philosophy vs Lua philosophy

[Andrew Starks <andrew.starks@...>]

On Mar 9, 2013, at 11:54, steve donovan <steve.j.donovan@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> There we must all agree.  But if there are too many hoops that the
> package producer must jump through, then not everyone wants to go
> through the trouble; it feels like bureaucratic overhead.  Although
> it's true that the _package author_ and the _package maintainer_ are
> quite distinct concepts.  In any future revision of the rockspec
> format, it must be possible to express that distinction.   That makes
> it easier for a gang of dedicated packagers to let the project
> developers do their own sweet, indispensable thing.  That's how
> LuaDist has managed to cover so many projects, and is certainly how
> something like Debian works.
>
> steve d.
>

Perhaps I'm emphasizing pragmatism around the idea that the maintainer
can mostly likely support only a limited number of methods,
consistently well.

You are pragmatically recognizing that many great projects won't make
it in, for what will seem like arbitrary reasons, such as too many
requirements for things to be done in one specified way.

My mind is always changeable and I'd like to help, even if something I
disagree with is decided. My belief is that both perspectives need to
be represented.

At the same time that is true, an extremely limited and rigid world
which works as expected for those that use it, can be made plug-able
and extended in the future more easily than...

...taking a kind of working, lots of not working, things are hard if
you are in Windows, some packages don't work at all for two of three
major platforms.. world, and trying to beat it into submission later.

Hisham need not judge the merits of a module. But the LuaRocks
ecosystem is only slightly less lawless than grabbing a zip file,
unpacking and building it yourself. LuaRocks, as a technology, isn't
to blame for that, however.

-Andrew Starks

"As we get older, and stop making sense"
-David Byrne