Re: [ANN] Lua 5.4.0 (alpha-rc1) now available

[Jonathan Goble <jcgoble3@...>]

On Thu, May 30, 2019 at 12:04 PM Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo
<lhf@tecgraf.puc-rio.br> wrote:
>
> > If your platform is a common Unix-like platform, just do
> >         make guess
> > The Makefile will guess your platform using uname and build Lua for it.
>
> We welcome feedback on this, which is new. More uname targets with
> explicit rules and fixes for existing ones. Thanks.

Why not make "guess" the default target, fall back to listing the
options if it fails, and document the additional options (like
linux-readline) in a little more detail in the readme? Then building
Lua on those common platforms becomes a simple "make && sudo make
install", in line with most open source Unix software.

I've always thought that Lua was a bit oddball for requiring an
explicit target with the "make" command. I suppose that requirement
has come with the lack of a "configure" script, but the "guess" target
is a nice step toward standardization. Making it the default would be
another nice step in that direction.

Also, would it be possible for "guess" on a Linux system to check
whether the readline headers are present, and build the
"linux-readline" target if found? Or is that a bad idea?