Re: cgit-lua: to jit or not to jit

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

On Monday, January 13, 2014, Jason A. Donenfeld  wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 3:37 AM, Andrew Starks <andrew.starks@trms.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > I don't have LuaJit installed and would not install it (and migrate
> > everything I do over to it) just to use a library. By way of example, your
> > library may as well have been written for Python, for as much good as it
> > would be to me.
> >
> > By contrast, if you stick to the subset of 5.2 that 5.1 supports, and / or
> > use a bit of the luacomp library, then anyone with lua 5.1, luajit or Lua
> > 5.2 can use it.
> >
> > The question, from a user's perspective is: what benefit are you giving me,
> > in exchange for locking me into luajit, as a dependency?
> >
> > Even if I am using Luajit, that doesn't mean that I don't need to support
> > the current, mainline distribution and straight 5.1. So, I can't use your
> > library as a dependency, if this were the case.
> >
> > It's easier for you if you like what the FFI gives you. Supporting the
> > common subset and using luacompat, as necessary, is the simplest, for the
> > user.
> >
> > IMHO, of course
>
> That's a fairly compelling opinion. The only thing against it is the
> temptation of using FFI in the default scripts that we ship with cgit.
> But I suppose for the sake of giving users choice later on, it might
> be best, as you've said, to continue to support both, and let the user
> choose.

Jason,

I also just remembered this:

https://github.com/jmckaskill/luaffi

Which is a luajit compatible FFI extension for Lua 5.1 and Lua 5.2, but 5.2 is listed as beta. It might be worth a shot, if it lets you gain some of those conveniences and keep a broad support base.

-Andrew