[ANN] Suravi 0.6 alpha release

[Dibyendu Majumdar <mobile@...>]

Suravi (https://github.com/dibyendumajumdar/Suravi) is a small
distribution of Ravi/Lua 5.3 with batteries such as cjson, lpeglabel,
luasocket, moses, penlight, torch7, luv, luaossl. I am pleased to
announce that a new release 0.6 alpha is available
(https://github.com/dibyendumajumdar/Suravi/releases/tag/0.6).

The goal of Suravi is to create a harmonious set of batteries for
Ravi/Lua 5.3. This goal is not yet achieved, as the libraries included
have some overlapping functionality, and some key areas are not yet
covered. However a start has been made to unify the documentation
here: https://github.com/dibyendumajumdar/Suravi/tree/master/Documentation

I am also pleased to announce that a Docker image for Suravi (with
Ravi) is now available, and if you have Docker installed then this is
the easiest way to try out Suravi.

docker pull redukti/suravi:latest
docker run --rm -it redukti/suravi:latest

Important Changes in this release:

* Ravi now uses the MIR JIT backend on Linux systems. This is a major
step forward for Ravi as MIR is a really small but high performance
JIT backend.

* All dependency on 'ffi' has been removed. 'ffi' was a source of
instability in Suravi; and several Torch libraries relied on it. I am
pleased to say that after some effort the use of ffi has been
eliminated. As a result the luaffi library has been dropped.

There is considerable work that remains to be done. It takes
significant effort to test all the libraries and then fix issues on
the three supported platforms - Win64, Linux and Mac OSX. This is
partly why Suravi only includes a small set of libraries.

Right now binaries are not distributed except as a Docker image. Win64
binaries will be added in the next few days.

I would welcome any help or feedback from the Lua community in improving Suravi.

Regards
Dibyendu