Re: Megapatches (Was: Lua Foundation?)

[Paige DePol <lual@...>]

steve donovan <steve.j.donovan@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 25, 2017 at 10:24 AM, Paige DePol <lual@serfnet.org> wrote:
>> steve donovan <steve.j.donovan@gmail.com> wrote:
>> "Modlua"[1], sort of a play on the language "Modula". I was also thinking
>> that perhaps a version of Lua could be built with a modular plugin design,
>> so extensions could be created via a plugin architecture... but that is
>> something I am still working out the details of in my mind.
> 
> A cool ambition, sir! I like the name....
> 
> There really are some cool patches out there, but applying them is a
> little fiddly.
> 
> Extending tight, focused C in a modular way is definitely a
> non-trivial problem!  The obvious bastards would be patches that touch
> multiple subsystems.

*Looks at my name* Sir? ;)

Yes, patches that touch multiple systems will be a pain... for now I am just
letting my brain percolate on the idea in the background while I play around
with hacking Lua and creating patches.

I am working towards creating my own derivative of Lua, mostly because I
really wanted to learn how the whole system worked, and what better way than
hacking the source code? :)

I am sure a bunch of my patches will be considered unnecessary, especially
given the minimalist design ethos of Lua. However, a design goal of my Lua
version is to provide the ability to preprocess back into vanilla Lua source
code, which will really help with benchmarking my features vs vanilla Lua!

With some of my ideas, like the Index Data Type, I am working towards
allowing faster access to frequently used data structures, providing a
defined object model, providing a defined interface between C and Lua, and
eventually all these definitions should help when I get JIT working as well.

Other things, like my RegEx implementation are because I just like RegEx's
and wanted them in Lua... even if the RegEx engine[1] is as big as Lua! ;)

I am working on the object model code right now, and hope to have something
for release soon.

~Paige

[1] Using PCRE (Perl Compatible Regular Expressions)