Some areas are far too ambitious to roll into a standard
distributions: graphical interfaces, a math library, a native threads
library, high quality audio, file/directory handling, signal
handling,
etc.
That said, there are certain concepts that are common across a huge
range of platforms that could easily be encapsulated in a single file
and would likely benefit a lot of users. The obvious ones are a ms
accurate timer (when available), sleep, and maybe a handful of
others.
Wasn't that the purpose of the LuaCheia project, to gather a
handful
of useful Lua modules and build an integrated solution from them?
Yup, that is exactly its purpose. The current version includes an
"fs" module that has functions "listdir", "listdir2", "fileinfo",
"getcwd", and "chdir". For timing, the only option in the current
luacheia is to use the SDL module, which has a good SDL_Ticks() call.
Loading SDL is kind of heavyweight just to get a timer, but it works
if you need it. Of course the original poster, Asko, knows this very
well since he wrote that module! :)
luacheia is an (imperfect) working model of a Lua distribution that is
more like Python, i.e. comes with kitchen sink. It addresses some
recurring requests that come up on the list (timers, directory
listings, enhanced require/loadlib functionality). Unfortunately the
team has not had time or energy lately to A) evangelize it on the list
here, B) keep improving and adding to the project, or C) get the file
releases up-to-date with the current CVS.
If you're looking to address some of these issues with Lua, we would
welcome an injection of time and energy into the luacheia project, and
I think there is plenty of worthwhile code and experience to share.
--
Thatcher Ulrich
http://tulrich.com
