Re: Lua for Windows: Why not use LuaRocks instead?

[Fabien <fleutot+lua@...>]

What I like most about LfW is that I don't have to figure out anything about the install, about tools syntax, about binary packages vs. source package, about repositories, about which packages I want or not, etc. I just point and click and I've got something I can toy with immediately with. And by toying, I mean toying with Lua programming matters, as opposed to packaging, libraries, install, corporate http proxy, config matters.

That's not demeaning Luarocks: a packaging system's purpose is to give me fine tuned control about what libs I want, where I want to fetch them from, how I want my paths to be configured, etc. And to get this control, I have to understand a couple of concepts and to make a couple of informed decisions. But sometimes, people would rather get something just good enough, without having to think twice about it. They don't want to wonder which batteries should be included where, and LfW effectively saves them from that.

As for the "just do make / make install" fantasy, my experience (admitedly with other tools than luarocks) is that it usually doesn't work as easily as advertized: there's always some weird interaction with a .h header file that's hacked in certain linux distributions, with a gcc version that's not compatible, with a lib that has some compatibility problems... And that's on POSIX OSes; on Windows, between slash vs backslashes issues, incompatible compilers, DLL hell, various incompatible unix shell emulators etc., people rightly expect any building from sources attempt to turn into a nightmare.