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On 10/26/2011 2:25 PM, Javier Guerra Giraldez wrote:

On Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 1:17 PM, Jimmie Houchin<jlhouchin@gmail.com>  wrote:

Requiring installation and forcing a centralized module system (e.g. by
only releasing modules that way) could cause significant problems to some of
us.


Understood. But how is this a problem?

it's not as long as it's not required.

case in point: there are some Lua packages with an INSTALL.txt file
with only "use luarocks".  great for maybe 60%-80% of users, useless
for many others.  usually, there's nothing in that package that needs
LuaRocks, but without knowing how is it supposed to be installed (or
even what are its requirements!), it becomes an obstacle.

much better would be "use LuaRocks, or be sure to have packages foobar
and bizbang available"

likewise, if some Lua packaging (distro?) becomes widely popular, and
regarded as a common standard; it becomes a platform, and some people
will create packages that need 'common' packages without specifying
(or knowing!) which ones are really required.

maybe a tracing tool that registers which packages are loaded would be
some help in documenting dependencies...

I agree that this would need to be done correctly.

I may be nuts, and am ok if demonstrated as such. :)
But I naively think that such a distribution or platform should within reason, potentially have its own repository of packages.
This way it could control packaging, require(ing), etc... without affecting other Lua installations on a machine. 
As you say it becomes its own platform.
If the author of a certain package does not wish it to be repackaged in the distribution's repository, but is ok with it being included and is happy to provide an appropriately packaged package. Then I don't see a problem with packages as such.
These are only thoughts from someone who would love to replace his use of Python with Lua. Someone who is not at this point able to contribute much other than ideas or thoughts.
I would love to see the ability to choose Lua to be one done on merits of Lua v. ??? language design and not on availability or support of libraries. 

Jimmie Houchin