Lua Dist

wiki

Description

LuaDist is sort-of like LuaRocks, BSD ports, and RPM:

• It's basically a ports system [1] based on CMake [2], which can build software in a cross-platform manner. (CMake is a build system generator that is perhaps the main alternative to autotools and supports a variety of systems, IDEs and compilers.)
• It contains a collection of CMake build files (CMakeLists.txt, e.g. [3]) for many packages. These can be used by themselves [4] with CMake to build modules, or the builds can be automated via the the luadist[5] utility.
• LuaDist can build/deploy many types of things, including applications (e.g. Lua), system libraries (e.g. zlib), Lua modules (e.g. luazlib), and (soon) entire distributions (e.g. Lua for Windows via the batteries[6] meta package).
• It contains a collection of dist.info files (e.g. [7]) containing metadata for packages and written in Lua syntax. These are quite similar to .rockspec files in LuaRocks, though without the build sections.
• It contains a mirror of package sources stored in central git Repository[8]. The sources combined with the build files and dist.info files are zipped into self-contained package files called "dists" for offline distribution.
• It contains the "luadist"[9] utility and libraries, written in Lua, to automate the process of downloading, building and deploying packages.
• "luadist" depends on CMake and a compiler toolchain for building packages from source, but it does not require these if you only deploy binary modules. Other than possibly CMake and a compiler toolchain, LuaDist is self-contained and builds it own dependencies from source.
• Though an automated tool has not yet been written, it's fairly straightforward to translate LuaDist packages to LuaRocks packages since LuaRocks supports CMake builds. The "luarocks" package in LuaDist will also be usable to deploy LuaRocks if desired.

License

LuaDist is free software and uses the MIT license.

Download

LuaDist can be downloaded from GitHub in source and binary form[10]. For source installation instructions visit the project wiki[11].

Related

• LuaRocks - similar project with different aims
• Debian Lua packages project - http://pkg-lua.alioth.debian.org/

User Comments

Can someone please provide a update on the status of LuaDist? The website luadist dot org looks like a domain squatting site, so it may not be good to directing people there. The github site appears to be archived, but I can't find any explanations. It would be nice to have a correct Status summary and current recommendations for new users.

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