Re: co-routines [was Re: Unicode]

[Edgar Toernig <froese@...>]

Roberto Ierusalimschy wrote:
> 
> No. Currently, our short-term plans are only better support for co-routines
> and multi-threading, and "names for tags".

Could you be a little bit more specific?  Just some functions to save/set
L->stack & co and a registration for lock-callbacks on table-set/get?
Or something more sophisticated?  What about the GC?
 
> Our most important mid-term plan is "consolidation and growth of a common
> core and user base" ;-) That means adding libraries and tools to Lua,
> instead of changing the language.

Hmm...  IMHO the lack of libs and tools is that there's no sane
module concept.  Look at the hacks luasocket has to do to get its
own namespaces.  Compare this the clean way in Sol's siolib.c.

I think, you'ld have it much easier if you would make the "user base"
take part in the development of Lua.  At the moment it looks like
a company.  Every your you get a new version.  Take it or die.
What happens between releases is totally closed.  Why don't you discuss
supposed changes?  For example, the 4.0 API is much better than that
of 3.2.  But some parts are still really strange.  I guess some talk on
the list would have given a better API.  The same thing happens now
with coroutines.  I bet you'll get something together.  But then 4.1
is out and it takes another year to get the misconceptions cleared.

That's the reason I made Sol.  I want to try something out and want
to get some feedback.  This feedback could be useful for the Lua
developers too.  Maybe someone says "that's bullshit".  Ok, he may
be right.  But when he says "that's great" or "make it this or that
and it would be even better" you get a much better feeling of what
people want or need.  I tried this a couple of times with smaller
patches but got nearly null feedback.  So I said, ok, make an own
derivate that people can really use and hear what they think about
it.  The yesterdays snapshot is the first step.

Ciao, ET.


PS to the Lua team: Don't take these harsh words to personally.
Lua is a fine language.  But sometimes I simply get frustrated
by its development style :-)