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Reuben Thomas wrote:
Speaking from a non-C programmer's point of view, I wouldn't mind doing this at all. Sure, I would prefer to have an exe of lua that had the ability to load dlls, and all of the popular lua libs compiled into dlls, all kept up to date and just waiting for me to download. :) That way, I could just include a "load xxx.dll" or something in my lua script and, "bingo", I have access to odbc, smtp, iup, etc........but at the moment, you don't need to build Lua to build Lua.But if you want to have multiple lua executables containing different libraries you're going to have this anyway arent you?I was just thinking of the typical scenario: download the source dist plus libraries you want, add the libraries to some config file, build. (i.e. a single executable). Doesn't really matter if it builds a vanilla one first in order to achieve this though.
Ok, ok, I'll wake up from my daydreaming! :)What I meant to say was that, even though I don't know C at all, I wouldn't have a problem if I had to do what Reuben wrote above in order to have a lua exe on Windows that included the functionality I wanted. I have BCC and Mingw installed on my pc. I would have no problem downloading the lua source dist plus libraries and compiling, if, and here's the rub, if I can get it to work! That's the problem I am having now. I HAVE downloaded the source and the libs, but when I follow the instructions, and any hints given on this list, I still end up getting some vague (to me) compiler error, and I am stuck. The best I have been able to do is to get the standard dist to compile into an exe.
So, I would have no problem doing what Reuben wrote about above. I wouldn't even mind having to download mutiple copies of the source that had been tweaked to work with different libraries, just so long as when I fire up the compiler, I get an exe.
Also, I would like to respond to an earlier post about Lua becoming like Perl or Python. I have programmed in Perl, Tcl, Python, Ruby, Rebol, you name it. I'm a scripting language junkie. I'm currently working on a project at work. I contemplated using one of the languages mentioned above and even went so far as to write one of the scripts in a couple of different languages. I ended up picking Lua, not because the other languages couldn't do it. In fact, because I need smtp, database access, gui, file processing, directory processing, and external command execution support, it might have been eaiser to pick Tcl or Python. But I chose Lua because the language is incredibly clean and simple. I love the way a table in Lua replaces hashes, lists, arrays, records, etc. I love the simple, inuitive syntax.
So, sure I would love for Lua to be able to replace Perl, Python, and Tcl in my day-to-day programming. But that doesn't mean I want Lua to BECOME Perl, Python, Tcl, etc. Lua is an awesome language. All it needs, IMHO, to supplant other scripting languages in a lot of programmers' arsenals is to have the ability to make use of some of the contributed libraries without having to crack open a C manual.
Didn't mean to make such a long post. Thanks for listening! Jamey.