Re: 250 entries in the LuaRocks repository

[Steve Litt <slitt@...>]

On Mon, 25 Mar 2013 12:42:18 -0300
Hisham <h@hisham.hm> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I'm happy to announce we just reached 250 entries in the LuaRocks
> repository (that's 250 different things for which you can run
> 'luarocks install thing').

Thanks Hisham,

Let me ask you this: Is there a unified place to get documentation on
all of them, including a keyword search? I mean A LOT more than:

luarocks search keyword

The preceding is good for the guy who knows what he wants and just
forgot the exact package name, but it's useless for the guy who wants
to know "what packages are available to interface to SNMP for me, and
what are their advantages?"

Imagine for a second how cool it would be if you could query a web
application that can search on keyword or partial name of word in
description, and then return matches with their descriptions and link
to full documentation. In my opinion this would eliminate the #1 reason
why people choose Python over Lua for non-embedded apps. This would
basically give the kitchen sink, but without burdening the basic Lua
distribution with even one more package.

I can tell you this would make me use Lua instead of Python in a great
many situations -- I don't think anyone doubts that Lua is the better
language.

So imagine all these free software creators switching to Lua, and then
for deployment just including a shellscript and batch file to tell
luarocks to install the necessary packages.

Let me ask you something: Does your luarocks repository database
currently list each rock's keywords, short description, and link to its
documentation? If so, perhaps I could write luarocks.inquire, modeled
after luarocks.search, to accept keywords, and show the necessary
name, short description, and link to complete documentation.

Personally, I think this would be a huge step forward in the usability
of Lua, and it wouldn't require any changes to the language.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt                *  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance