That's a key specificity of Lua that its API is not
stable. Lua is an
evoluting language. You just have to look at Lua 4
manual to figure
the heavy changes that have happened. Maybe you should
consider each
Lua version as a different language.
This may be a source of troubles for people having a
large codebase
relying on a specific API. For long term project you
should stick to a
specific version of Lua. But according to that page
(http://www.lua.org/news.html), Lua 5.0 first alpha/beta
releases are
already 4 years old, and Lua 5.0 is still maintained and
supported by
the mailing list. I think it's quite a long time
already.
Lua 5.1 has a lot of optionnal compatibility features
that helps make
the transition smoother. And Lua releases become more
and more distant
from each other. Lua 5.2 may take several years to come
(the graph on
that page looks like a reassuring exponential
distribution :
http://www.lua.org/versions.html).
My 2 (or 3) cents.
2006/11/12, Mike Kreuzer <mike@mikekreuzer.com>:
Just noticed some other 5.2 wish list items, and, well,
Christmas is
coming up. :-)
My wish: a stable API between versions. Every time Lua
increments a
version all the Lua DLL (and equivalent) users have a
lot of back-end
re-writing to do. Some is sometimes inevitable, but
less would be
better.
If a project takes several years to develop, and it's
hoped that it'll
be useful for several years after it's finished, that's
two lots of
several years worth of stable API to aim for.
Regards,
Mike Kreuzer
www.mikekreuzer.com
