Hi, I am going over the official FreeBSD Lua53 Ports collection files and wanted to share my thoughts. [groans from the audience] These ports collections contain the files that are used to patch and build packages on FreeBSD and are also used to power the binary build system. Some Ports are better than others and some fall into disrepair. I have agreed to (attempt) to take on the Lua53 port. The source files can be found here: https://svnweb.freebsd.org/ports/head/lang/lua53/ [1][2]
Great that you taking care of the Lua 5.3 port. My first remark is, that the you can fix that. My synopsis so far is this: From what I can tell, the default Lua
makefile doesn't work on FreeBSD when the freebsd target is called.
Not surprisingly, the FreeBSD port effectively doesn't use the
makefile from the lua tarball. It is heavily patched and it doesn't
seem to use the FreeBSD target.
I think it is fine to use your own Makefile (we do the same in our projects), but if you find issues with the Makefile distributed with Lua, maybe post it on the list, so upstream can eventually fix it.
To continue, I have some observations about the "port", some of which I think are worth bringing up here: - files/patch-src__Makefile - This patch adds support for *.so files. Can I ask why there is no built in target for shared objects files in Lua? I am probably missing something. I checked the tarball and git. I also tried to look this subject up on the archives but couldn't find anything. The patch file is here: https://svnweb.freebsd.org/ports/head/lang/lua53/files/patch-src__Makefile?view=markup
Lua is so small, it is usually statically linked. And then, even the use of the dynamic linker in Lua is optional, afaict. - In the main makefile for the port, there are two post-patch replacements that happen. One is replacing readline with libeditline. Editline seems to be a default library for FreeBSD if man pages are an indication: https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?editline. This is noted more for interest as I think this library plus the patch that duane provided lends weight to the idea of Lua adding it's own library and dumping readline altogether.
Isn't readline GPL? So I understand FreeBSD using sth different. - The second post patch seems to change rand to random. My question
is: Is this patch necessary, does it affect other platforms, and
should it be pushed upstream?
random() is mentioned as being a "bad random number generator" in the man page, so why not change it to something really random, if it absolutely needs be changed? Also to consider, there are now a number of patches listed for 5.3.4
on the bugs list. My assumption is that those are not in the official
tarball, but ARE in the head revision of the GitHub repo? I'm trying
to find the shortest path to a clean port file so my question is:
would it be easier to manually assemble the patches and continue
including a file and patching the tarball, or is there some merit to
switching over and downloading from GitHub based on a commit?
The patches should definitely make it into the port, they fix real, existing issues. In conclusion, the failure of the freebsd target in my tests and the
heavy modification to the base makefile leads me to think it might be
worthwhile to switch to GitHub and use the base makefile to
springboard a separate FreeBSD makefile altogether. Thoughts?
That makes no sense, to create a secondary Lua repository, it only means you will have to keep stuff in sync with lua.org. Also keep in mind, that Lua is open source, but it is not developed in the open.
I would pull the tarball from lua.org, and have the patches from To be pointed, I think the freebsd target in the Lua makefile should be fixed or removed. However, this is a separate discussion that should be had around some of the other build change possibilities in other threads (see the thread titled "Building Lua 5.3 from Lua.org on FreeBSD").
I am all for fixing. I am sure upstream will apply this fixes, if they make sense to them.
Thanks and goodnight,
Russ
Thanks for taking care of Lua on FreeBSD; that is appreciated.
- mb
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