Re: Lua distros again

[Dibyendu Majumdar <mobile@...>]

On 29 January 2018 at 22:55, Dibyendu Majumdar <mobile@majumdar.org.uk> wrote:
> Thank you all for the feedback. My shortlist now consists of:
>
> - lpeg
> - luafilesystem
> - luasocket
> - libuv (Luvit)
> - libcurl (wrapper tbc)
> - lua-cjson
> - torch7
> - luaossl
> - cephes (wrapper tbc)
> - luaffifb (port of LuaJIT FFI interface)
>

I have been thinking about how to go about with this. I want to create
a harmonious whole on the one hand, on the other, want the ability to
easily pull changes from the upstream projects.

Seems like the Luadist model is a good fit:

a) Fork an upstream project (possibly create a branch called 'Ravi' as
I expect to have to tweak some aspects of the project).
b) Create a submodule in the distro project for each upstream project.
c) Hook it all up in a CMake based build system.

My goal is not to create a generic package manager for Lua. Nor to
make it easy for users to pull in additional modules easily. Instead
the goals are:

1. Well tested and supported product on Windows, Linux and Mac OS -
all supported modules installed up-front.
2. Binary distros for each supported platform (native installers would
be nice but I don't know how to do that so initially it may be in the
form of a self contained compressed archive).
3. The installation should not require any system privileges, and
should just work.
4. Long term support and commitment for the distro (i.e. best effort
to fix bugs and incorporate additional high quality libs) - however
this does not imply Ravi will keep up with Lua changes, because to me
100% backwards compatibility is of paramount importance. I may
selectively apply changes that are non disruptive.

Regards