On Thu, 2020-01-30 at 20:26 +0100, nobody wrote:
> Another part of that problem is that for a far too long, the only Lua
> you could get on Debian/Ubuntu was Lua 5.1…
It's still a problem. If you want luarocks for Lua 5.3, it should be
built from source. I think there are like only few 5.3 libraries in
Ubuntu repository, like json parser and probably lpeg.
As a result, I have to pack pretty much all required stuff using local
luarocks tree with my application instead of, like, just listing
required packages to be installed (because end users do not want to
have fun with installing and configuring luarocks and libraries
installed using it, which would not be the case with apt).
That's the same problem on all platforms that I work with: Windows, FreeBSD and Debian/Ubuntu (I didn't even try pacman when I was playing with an Arch distro and just went straight to sources). Windows doesn't have a built in package manager (besides Windows Store) so Lua either needs a "batteries" install like LuaForWindows or a complete package with LuaRocks and a compiler. I am working on solving the latter problem.
On FreeBSD we have finally got an up-to-date Lua 5.3.5 port, but there a number of other impediments, namely that the default Lua version is stuck at 5.2. That means if any application has a Lua requirement it defaults to 5.2. Andrew Gierth is working on fixing the "FLAVORS" build option (allows for version/flavor selection) but that is a point solution in my opinion. There are quite a few Lua packages in the ports tree, most of them are badly out of date and stuck at 5.2. Without building all Lua dependent packages with 5.3 and triaging the fallout, I don't know how we are going to fix these shortcomings on a FreeBSD wide scale. The pending 5.4 release will exasperate the problem. There are methods to build all the packages but I don't have time to implement them and the FreeBSD team that is responsible has been less than willing to oblige me. Luarocks is currently stuck at 3.0.3 in FreeBSD, but that's on me at the moment (will need to update the code review to 3.3.0).
V's observation - in my opinion - is hand-in-glove with the "Lua needs a standard library" discussion. Do we *really* need a standard library if Lua was as easy to extend as Node.js when used in conjunction with NPM?
Russ
--
v <v19930312@gmail.com>
