Re: Portable binary distribution of Lua 5.3.3 (32bit on Windows 10) with some batteries

["Pavel Drotar" <gmc1@...>]

Hisham, Hisham 

as a creator and maintainer of Luarocks will you do something with module naming conventions? 

Luarocks is big help for Lua community, but it would be nice to ask module authors and maintainers they try to compile their work (specially if it is promoted as multi-platform) for themselves. I work mostly on Linux but most people I know work mostly in Windows, most of my clients also.

LuaSQL-MySQL is good example. It's luarock will never compile on that weird thing called Windows. It's because bad library name in module's rockspecs file. There is no library named mysqlclient.dll in MySQL installation on Windows. Right name is libmysql.dll. Nobody even the author can compile his own module with this rockspecs and never did. Never tried that, but uploaded it to Luarocks server and someone approved it.

This is disgusting for Lua beginners. I tried that on myself, I know it. Language is cool but small, containing only base tools (it's for purpose and it's ok). If you need something more, you can install additional modules. But modules have confusing names, sometimes have no help for installation specially for Windows platform and sometimes are not tested by their authors :( 

This is why Lua community is much smaller than communities of other languages. May be it is for purpose to have small community and still work (starting new projects) in Lua 5.1 (really don't blame it), I don't know :) 

How many very popular C modules are there which provide what is easy installable in other languages or is a part of the standard library, standard installation, like connection via https or connection to mysql? 10? 20? Is it so hard to ask authors to verify their work? People want it, need it, these modules are on the list of most downloaded modules.

People in this mailing list are able to talk whole days about missing "continue" command or stupid holes in tables? What about to do something for newcomers, like Steve did with Unofficial FAQ or with his very well documented Penlight module. Sometime I have strong feeling that on Lua.org home page should be first links to download 5.1, luadist, luapower, ulua, zerobrane and download link for 5.3 should be at the very end. 

This was written in good intensions. Going to compile something :)
Thank you.

I.

> ** Mon, 25 Jul 2016 22:20:59 -0300 - "Lua mailing list" <lua-l@lists.lua.org> **
>
> On 25 July 2016 at 06:07, Pavel Drotar <gmc1@azet.sk> wrote:
> > Hi guys,
> >
> > I created portable binary distribution of Lua 5.3.3 (32bit on Windows 10) with some batteries (I think are important IMHO) included for those who are pretty frustrated from compilation of Lua C modules on Windows and installation help from the authors. Specially I want to mention lsqlite3 module, luasql-mysql module and luasec module. Such approach doesn't help to wider Lua usage.
> >
> > Lua is very powerful and elegant language and not everyone who wants to learn it is experienced in C language. If you want to start your Lua adventure with latest Lua please feel free to download it. It runs even from USB.
> >
> > Whats included:
> > lua 5.3.3
> > lpeg 1.0.0-1
> > lrexlib-pcre 2.8.0-1
> > lsqlite3 0.9.3-0
> > luafilesystem 1.6.3-2
> > luasec 0.6-1
> > luasocket 3.0rc1-2
> > luasql-mysql cvs-1
> > luautf8 0.1.1-1
> > md5 1.2-1
> > microlight 1.0-1
> > penlight 1.3.2-2 ... perfect for studying Lua code
> >
> > You can find it here:
> > https://github.com/is73/Lua-5.3-Portable-Batteries-Windows-10-32bit
> 
> Nice!
> 
> Given that the version numbers above include LuaRocks revision
> numbers, it's fair to assume that these were built thanks to their
> rockspecs. :-D So that being the case, would you consider including
> LuaRocks itself in the package, making life easy for users who would
> like to use it to fetch other pure-Lua modules?
> 
> Cheers!
> 
> -- Hisham