Re: Installing LuaForWindows_v5.1.4-36.exe

[steve donovan <steve.j.donovan@...>]

On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 10:07 PM, Ryan Pusztai <rpusztai@gmail.com> wrote:
> If you get it from
> here: http://luaforwindows.googlecode.com/files/vcredist_x86.exe
> just place it next to the LfW install executable and it will use that
> instead of downloading it.
> This is covered on the main Lua for Windows page under the 'Install Notes'
> section.

This kind of MS runtime dependency has made us seriously think about
switching to GCC, now that there's practically no difference in code
generation quality.  The latest version of LuaRocks supports GCC on
Windows optionally as well.

Using the VC2005 runtime is in any case already outdated (it's
becoming hard to get the MS tool chain) so it's a ripe time for this
decision.  The idea would be to have a full build of LfW (which has
always been an issue) perhaps using LuaDist, although LuaRocks will be
the deployment tool for extras.

It's true that Windows programmers are fond of their tools, but LfW is
primarily a scripting environment - people can grab the VC2008
binaries from LuaBinaries and it is not difficult to embed using
source anyway.  SciTE can debug C/C++ code, and in fact can be set up
to provide seamless Lua-to-C debugging.

(In fact, the beauty of something like LuaDist as a build-the-universe
system is that any reasonable compiler can be targeted.)

Any opinions about this proposed change?

steve d.