Re: Moonscript as a useful notation for Lua users

[Dirk Laurie <dirk.laurie@...>]

2013/8/13 steve donovan <steve.j.donovan@gmail.com>:

> It's a lot of work to make non-trivial Lua programs without dependencies,
> which is why if you have the itch, you have to scratch it yourself ;)   I
> mean, I _could_ make a self-contained version of luaish that had the sources
> for Lua 5.?, luaposix and lua-linenoise, but should I do this work, given
> that I have already an impossible list of things to do?

No, you should not, given that you are presumably happy to remain the sole
user of luaish. Otherwise, you should. If necessary, tear up that list of
things to do.  "Few, but ripe." — Gauss.

Good, reliable software requires a user base, otherwise it is never
properly tested. A user base requires good, reliable software. Catch-22,
but it can be bootstrapped by software that is not yet good or reliable,
but is easy to install and maintain.

I use a lot of software written in Haskell, despite knowing b*****-all
about Haskell, merely because `cabal install pkg` does everything. I use
some software from github, provided that `git clone pkg; cd pkg; make`
gives me a working version and `git pull; make` updates it.

I use several Lua-based packages that come complete with the needed Lua
infrastructure (luatex, gsl-shell, love2d) because they can be installed
and maintained just as effortlessly.

I use comparatively few Lua packages, because they tend not to work. Sad,
but true. The ones I do use are nearly self-contained, requiring not
much more than setting environment variables in the Makefile ((lpeg, lfs,
many of LHF's packages).