Re: [ANN] Lua For Windows v5.1.3.3 Public Alpha2 released

[Stephen Kellett <lua@...>]

gary ng wrote:
> Just to avoid further mis-communication, I am not
> arguing for arguing's sake but genuinely can't link
> 'support .NET' means shipped with .NET runtime. Or
> support Java means ships with java runtime. 

This Windows Installer thread started because of some inexperienced 
people have a bad experience with Lua because they didn't understand how 
to install Lua etc.

Many people think the same way about applications - they download them 
and expect them to work, they have no knowledge or concept of Java or 
.Net. Therefore the installer takes care of it for them. That is why we 
get these huge installers I referred to.

Given that this Windows installer is meant to make things simpler/easier 
for these people its seems reasonably obvious to me that if you put a 
.Net requirement in the mix that the installer should satisfy that 
requirement.

If people disagree with that, thats fine, but that is where I'm coming 
from. It certainly seems to be same attitude you see for commercial 
software - they don't assume that the customer/user knows they have to 
install .Net/SQL server/bouncing rubbery ball with a frog, the installer 
does it all for them and even sets the frog bouncing on the ball.

>To me 'support' means 'if you have .NET, you can load
>lua by ...' but that is quite different from 'You must
>have .NET' in order to run lua.

Fair enough. Its still a mis-communication if the people you are 
communicating with have different expectations for that phrase. For me, 
you can only support .Net if you are using .Net and thus, you must 
require .Net. Which leads me to my next question (the answer to which 
will probably solve this whole thing):

Q: I'm puzzled as to how you can support .Net without having any .Net 
dependencies.

Do you have a mechanism for detecting .Net then doing certain .Net 
things if it is present. Rather like in C you could do GetModuleHandle() 
then GetProcAddress() and call the function if both the DLL and the 
function are present? Or are you just shipping an assembly which will do 
nothing unless .Net is present?

Stephen
--
Stephen Kellett
Computer Consultancy, Software Development, Windows, C++, JavaScript,
Ruby, Java, Assembler, Performance Analysis, Troubleshooting

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