Re: [ANN] Lua for Linux, alpha release

[Miles Bader <miles@...>]

steve donovan <steve.j.donovan@gmail.com> writes:
>> It will never be possible to make all lua-libraries available and always
>> up to date as .deb, .rpm-suse, .rpm-rhel. rpm-rhel-i386, and so on, so I
>> think luarocks is a better way to go here. Just my opinion.
>
> That's the basic problem; getting probably dozens of little packages
> into the distros.  They are obviously resistant to that, and probably
> for a good reason.  apt-get is very good for getting an application,
> or a big library, but for such fine-grained stuff  -don't know if it
> scales properly.

I dunno, I use debian's Lua packages and they rock, really.  I don't
perceive any "resistance" to adding lua library packages, but obviously
someone's gotta do it.

_If_ all the Lua packages you want are available in debian, then it
seems a no brainer to just use them; really they're no different than C
libraries or whatever.

The main drawback is that not every package is available, and you have
to <do something else> for those that aren't.  Maybe run luarocks, but
native debian packages probably have a big advantage for packages which
require non-Lua components.

> And then there's the integration aspect.  Imagine how irritating it
> would be for Python users if a Python install involved dozens of
> little modules?  Granted, meta packages and all that.  But it would be
> a bitch getting any kind of integrated help going.

I don't know exactly what you're envisioning -- some bigass IDE kinda
thing?

I think to some degree you have to consider the culture of the
programmers who will be using Lua; the whole "huge bloated
includes-everything install blob" seems very natural for windows, but
very unnatural for linux, and very unnatural for Lua (Lua programmers
are used to small/svelte/minimal installs).

I think really what I'd want is just a simple tool that (1) has a list
of a bunch of common packages, and (2) can install them, (3) bonus
points if it can grovel around and preferentially install any native
(debian/...) package before trying luarocks.

[Maybe luarocks already does all that to some degree , I dunno, I've
never used it.]

-Miles

-- 
Occam's razor split hairs so well, I bought the whole argument!