Lua package manager(s)

[Steven Degutis <sbdegutis@...>]

I recently wrote a Mac OS X app[1] that just acts as a Lua host, and I
wrote some packages for it that let you do things like inspect and
move windows, bind global hotkeys to arbitrary Lua functions, etc...
It was called Hydra but the name had to be changed to Mjolnir for
trademark reasons.

Anyway, there was a lot of disagreement among my app's users for how
to install packages. So I took out the internal package management
code I wrote, moved all my modules to LuaRocks, and told all my app's
users to just use that for their packages.

But there's been a lot of discussion on my app's mailing list about
wanting a different package manager. Partly because LuaRocks (1) is
missing some features like being able to know what packages can be
upgraded, and being able to upgrade them, and (2) is designed for the
command-line primarily, and we're not sure it's reasonable to embed it
into my application and use it in a Lua-prompt (i.e. REPL).

As for #1, there has already been an open issue about this for
years[2] which has not seen any activity, and I've posted a new
issue[3] requesting this feature, which also has not seen any
response. So this gives me no hope that this feature will be added any
time soon, or that a pull-request including it is welcome.

So we've been looking into all our available options. Some of the
options that users are suggesting and brainstorming involve writing a
brand-new Lua package manager. Some involve forking LuaRocks itself.
Some involve writing new tools on top of LuaRocks.

Because of the scope the discussion in my mailing list[4][5][6] is
taking on, it seemed fitting to me to write this email to lua-l to
bring up the issue to the wider Lua community.

[1] http://mjolnir.io/
[2] https://github.com/keplerproject/luarocks/issues/22
[3] https://github.com/keplerproject/luarocks/issues/282
[4] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mjolnir-io/9Bg5JNa_MiU
[5] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mjolnir-io/Q200sDBapxE
[6] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mjolnir-io/TyKRqMpgO5U

-Steven