Re: lua.vm.js - Lua VM, on the Web

[Nicolas <nicolas@...>]

On 01 Jun 2013 03:52:50 +0200
Alon Zakai <alonzakai@gmail.com> wrote:

> I added the ability to write HTML script tags in Lua, example here
> http://kripken.github.io/lua.vm.js/script_example.html
> Do "view source" on the page to see the Lua in it.

Very nifty (that and the whole thing).

Is there support for javascript "new" oeprator?
As in if in lua I wanted to do the equivalent of JS "new WebSocket(...)"
I tried with a js.run() call but it returned 0 instead of the websocket

> 
> - Alon
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 11:31 AM, Alon Zakai <alonzakai@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
> > Hi everyone,
> >
> > I'd like to present lua.vm.js, a new project that ports the Lua VM
> > to JavaScript using Emscripten. The goal is to get the full Lua
> > language running on the web, so people can use Lua there.
> >
> > main page: http://kripken.github.io/lua.vm.js/lua.vm.js.html
> > repl: http://kripken.github.io/lua.vm.js/repl.html
> > blogpost with more details:
> > http://mozakai.blogspot.com/2013/05/lua-in-javascript-running-vm-in-vm.html
> >
> > The idea is that by compiling Lua to asm.js, a subset of JavaScript
> > that is easy to optimize, the Lua VM can run at nearly the speed it
> > would run normally on your machine. Benchmarks show it can run at
> > about half the speed of a native build, which should be more than
> > enough for many use cases I think, and this is expected to improve.
> >
> > Comparison to other approaches for running Lua on the web:
> >
> > * This is a straightforward compilation of Lua 5.2.2. So no effort
> > is needed to recreate all the work done on Lua, we just compile it
> > to JS like we would compile it to x86 or ARM, and get the full
> > language "for free".
> >
> > * This uses only standard stuff on the web - JavaScript - and does
> > not require anything nonstandard or proprietary (like Flash, NaCl,
> > etc.). So it should run in any modern browser.
> >
> > * Speed will vary by browser, depending on the power of the JS
> > engine on this type of code (you can run a benchmark on the main
> > page in those links). The half native speed figure from before is
> > what I get on my machine, running Firefox nightly. But even if it
> > is less fast on another browsers, the good thing about the JS speed
> > race is that they all get faster in order to match whichever is
> > better at something, so I would expect this to become fast
> > everywhere.
> >
> > Hopefully this project will be interesting to people. It would be
> > great to get feedback and help from Lua users and developers to
> > improve it and make it something that's useful for people.
> >
> > - Alon Zakai
> >
> >