Re: Lua library bank? (Was: Ruby philosophy vs Lua philosophy

[Kevin Martin <kev82@...>]

I use Lua purely as an embedded language in our optimisation engine, I've built quite a few custom libraries where perhaps one out there already would have been better.

One of the reasons for this has been the perceived work (admittedly it might be easier than it looks) integrating the libraries into our build system. I would like to see something similar to the SQLite amalgamation for Lua libraries, so that I could just download one file (c or lua) and just add it to package.preload.

This would make me much more likely to use and get involved with the libraries than more/different package management.

Thanks,
Kev

Sent from my iPhone

On 28 Feb 2013, at 10:39, Dirk Laurie <dirk.laurie@gmail.com> wrote:

> Somewhere the thread changed course from not just Ruby vs Lua
> to that reliable old performer, Lua's lack of "batteries".
> 
> I don't think anybody seriously means "like Python."  Python is
> way past "batteries included". It's reached the stage of "any old
> junk repackaged". I've just asked Ubuntu's package manager how many
> packages have "python" and "binding" in their names.
> 
> Python, 342.
> 
> Ruby, 101.
> 
> Perl, 81.
> 
> Lua, 13. None of which I have actually installed.
> 
> I can think of several reasons.
> 
> 1. Lua is not as pervasive as the others.
> 2. It's quite easy in Lua (and trivial in LuaJIT) to write bindings for
>    just the few routines from a large C library that you actually need.
> 3. Lua fans don't like taking code someone else wrote on trust. Core
>    Lua is OK, it goes through several rc versions, we all had a chance
>    to put it through its paces. But not just anything.
> 
> Do we really need another library bank? We have luarocks.
> It's a pons asinorum. Packaging something as a rock is just tricky
> enough to eliminate the nine-day wonders and let through only
> those authors with a little staying power.
> 
> Personally, I find that of the dozens of Lua 5.1 non-rocks packages
> that I installed and tried, only four (lfs, lpeg and two others) made it
> to my 5.2 library. And I'm pretty sure lfs and lpeg are 5.2 rocks too
> by now.
> 
> What we do need is something like Amazon's user review
> system. I need say a json reader, the LuaWiki lists several and
> it's really hard to figure out which to try first. It's not going be the
> same for everyone. But with a user review system I can see
> which product gets a good rating from people with my sort of
> setup.
> 
> Isn't it just a question of installing the right open-source
> package on say lua-users.org and waiting for us Lua users
> to provide the input?
>