But yes, in theory, that might be nice! There's also the Python-powered shell, Xonsh, which I can't use either.
You have to reinvent the wheel every other day since the standard library doesn't come with much included
If you're stuck with the standard library (hello gsub!) and the application-specific library is an incoherent collection of functions, you're going to have a really bad time. That's the case too often because it's easier to plug the VM into an existing program than it is to create bindings that are not painful to use.
OTOH a well thought out environment makes you forget you're programming in Lua.
I'm sure there are plenty of libraries out there to rectify those issues, though.
You'll need a glob function, cd/getcwd/setcwd, pretty-printer. That's about it.
Lua stdlib replaces sed, awk, grep, cut, tr, tail, etc.
Startup time is the best. In my testing, a lua script that functions like `echo` runs faster than echo.
this is kind of hilarious
lua must be severely optimized at this point
the reason why it took so long is I use nixos and nix-darwin and... well, you know... it was non-obvious how to get everything working together "because Nix" but with the help of a good LLM I figured it out.
HOLY HELL IS THIS FAST.
i had the brand new chatgpt 4.1 rewrite a name=value pretty-printer terminal function from elixir (which I used because it was easy and maintainable, but at the cost of the VM startup) to lua.
272ms for the elixir version (`env | name-value-to-table`) vs. 17ms for the Lua version (`env | name-value-to-table-lua`). WOW. 1/16 the time LOL.
anyway here is that rewrite https://gist.github.com/pmarreck/47e110cbc62ea6603a0e61543d2...
Guess I'm gonna have to keep this in my toolkit! (And now that I figured out the Nix, it will remain easy!) Thanks!
On a lot of bases. Javascript has real lambdas, a sort of homoiconicity of code and data (hence JSON as a data format), also has the same dynamic take as lisps on "types belong to data". Rather than variables types belong to values. Brendan Eich's original idea was literally to "put scheme in the browser" and you can in fact pretty easily convert the Little Schemer to JS.
Saying two languages don't have much in common because they don't have the same syntax is a bit like saying we don't have much in common because we don't have the same hair color.
ES6 JS has nice syntax for calculating with lists:
let [car, ...cdr] = [1,2,3]
Lisp killer features were GC, good data representation, first class functions. Lua has all that and more. But its being a "thin" library over the C runtime shows through the clothes.
One thing I do know is that JS and Lisp both treat functions as first-class citizens, allow some degree of meta-programming, and rely heavily on hierarchical (e.g., nested objects in JavaScript vs. s-expressions in Lisp).
Passing functions by reference enables both LISP and JS to compose higher-order functions and, as suggested in another commented, both Lisp and JavaScript's "dynamic stack frames" somehow live updates to running code without requiring a complete restart of the application. The only clear example of this I can find, however, is Bun's --hot mode, which performs a "soft reload," updating its internal module cache and re-evaluates the changed code while preserving global state.
I have some vague notion that this is a favorite feature of Lisp, but it's not clear to me that it's unique to these language families.
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Edit: Lexical scoping, closures, some tail-call optimization...
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Edit 2:
> Programming language “paradigms” are a moribund and tedious legacy of a bygone age. (Dave Herman)[0]
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Edit 3:
> The venerable master Qc Na was walking with his student, Anton. Hoping to prompt the master into a discussion, Anton said "Master, I have heard that objects are a very good thing - is this true?" Qc Na looked pityingly at his student and replied, "Foolish pupil - objects are merely a poor man's closures."
> Chastised, Anton took his leave from his master and returned to his cell, intent on studying closures. He carefully read the entire "Lambda: The Ultimate..." series of papers and its cousins, and implemented a small Scheme interpreter with a closure-based object system. He learned much, and looked forward to informing his master of his progress.
> On his next walk with Qc Na, Anton attempted to impress his master by saying "Master, I have diligently studied the matter, and now understand that objects are truly a poor man's closures." Qc Na responded by hitting Anton with his stick, saying "When will you learn? Closures are a poor man's object." At that moment, Anton became enlightened.
-- Anton van Straaten 6/4/2003 [1]
0. https://cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Papers/Published/sk-te...
1. https://people.csail.mit.edu/gregs/ll1-discuss-archive-html/...
I just think it's a shame that the manifest file for Lua projects would be in a language other than Lua itself. I'm more sympathetic to other trade-offs, though, such as being able to edit the file mechanically.
Configs are configs. It’s better for them to be obvious and verbose than it is for them to be hard to understand and pithy. They don’t have the same requirements as the software that actually goes out on the release train.
For example, how would I `lx add <dependency@version>` if the `dependencies` table might be generated by a Lua function?
Not too hard. Emacs does it with the .emacs file, mixing generated and manual content.
Anyway, luarocks is easy to use, and is perfectly easy to integrate into most modern build and distribution tools.
However, Lua is everywhere, so of course: ymmv. Disclaimer: I’ve been using Lua for decades now, its Just Great™ in my opinion.
I don't know if this is better for that use case, but even if not, luarocks is clunky and annoying to use at best.
1. Does this integrate natively with `package.path` and `package.cpath`?
2. Does it detect non-standard, popular installations like through brew(1)?
3. Can you install by GitHub `:user/:repository`?
Also, neat project! Nice work.
2. It defaults to using pkg-config to detect Lua installations and will fall back to installing Lua via the `lua_src` and `luajit_src` crates if it can't find them. We may eventually add support for other tools like vcpkg.
3. Not yet. It's on our roadmap to add support for that to our lux.toml/dependencies spec, but we probably won't allow rockspecs with that to be published to luarocks.org, because we don't want to be the reason people publish packages that can't be built by luarocks.
Thanks :)
I have a strong opinion on this, as a Lua developer with some experience shipping Lua code.
Good third-party package management for Lua should function independently from the system-provided Lua installations.
It’s all too easy for newcomers to the Lua app-development world to tie themselves into some “auto-detected Lua” path that is, frankly, bonkers. It makes things hard to ship.
If you’re going to write a Lua app, and want to manage your Lua dependencies - use ‘luarocks —local’ and leave system-provided resources out of the picture.
Bundle Lua up front.
This is true of python, also: if you’re going to try to build an app that uses either Lua/python, one must take responsibility for building and bundling locally, and not using system-provided lua/python bindings.
Sure, use “brew —-prefix lua” to get things started, if that has to be a thing. Use pkg-config too, to build the “System/Package-Manager provided” lists.
One of the best practices for luarocks is to know and use the —-local flag with gusto and bravado, and include its artifacts in a larger app build/bundling target. This can be done in a cross-platform manner for all of the major platforms. Having a build target with a successful ‘luarocks —local’, for a locally built Lua and dependencies, does indeed rock. You can put everything in a .local/lua … and treat it just like any other linkable object resource.
If there is one solid rule for effective Lua development, it is: leave the system Lua’s alone, and build your own .local/lua tree, properly.
If you can’t do that, you’ll be missing out on the grand prize: being able to ship Lua with certainty that your Lua bundle will work, regardless of whats onboard the users’ setup … which is, after all, kind of a holy grail of the language, and therefore also a priority of its package management tools.
Another “Lua dev maxim” is, there are many Lua’s. There are reasons to use Lua 5.1 in a project - and reasons to use 5.4 and LuaJIT, too. Switching Lua’s is why I luaenv, but also, you can bootstrap a fresh Lua with CMake real fast, either as a project tool/binary, or directly to the VM abstractions, integrated into your app. A great Lua project has Lua 5.4 in the project, and both developer and end-user host binaries which include a Lua 5.4 environment, sandboxed, built from exactly the same sources. Bonus points for the Desktop/Mobile bridge getting crossed ..
So, depending on a system Lua, is repeating the same mistake prior lua package managers made, maybe. I have reached nirvana with luaenv+luarocks+cmake, personally.
I’m not suggesting lux not try to be self-aware on the basis of finding system standard tooling and libraries for its purposes, but that to be better than luarocks, lux will have to be able to handle —-local builds just as well ..
Luarocks is not just about being a ‘pip for Lua’, its also about having everything relatively tidy to support a fully local build and packaging target. With luarocks you can not use the system Lua, entirely - and that is a pretty significant use-case for luarocks, its utility in the packaging steps ..
Additionally, I think there should be examples on the website of typical workflow(s).
Additionally, is "luvit" integrated in some way or another?
Additionally, does it work with LuaJIT? I assume it does, but worth a question.
- We're still quite early on in development, so documentation and things like error messages will need fleshing out.
- We don't have luvit integration yet
- Yes, it also works with LuaJIT, either via pkg-config or by installing LuaJIT headers using the `luajit_src` crate.
Are there any documentation on this?
luarocks works with luajit after I run that specific command, I expect something like that as it is very easy, so I wonder if running "lx path bin" would work.
I think moreso is the complete lack of any "batteries included" whatsoever. Not even something so basic as sockets are supported by Lua's stdlib. The ecosystem has had to fill so many gaps and a lot of that is dependent on Leafo and LuaRocks.
I'm hoping the great mlua Rust crate will help build the ecosystem since now it's mostly trivial to build easily-distributable native Lua packages in Rust.
- pixi.sh (docs) - lua package on the registry: https://prefix.dev/channels/conda-forge/packages/lua
No, thanks.
Luarocks has its limits and probably should be rewritten, but using a language that fits the ecosystem and following the culture of the Lua ecosystem.
Rust and Cargo represent exactly the opposite of Lua.
To be honest, none of this is any different for python, or any of the other scripted languages which might be found ‘onboard’; however, one must always differentiate between the system-provided /bin/script_language, and one which might be being used as a development tool/scripting engine in a larger project, or indeed .. local tooling .. workbench.
One of the reasons I like Lua so darn much, is that its really easy and fun to get all the libs packaged up, bytecode linked, bundle wrapped up, and have a single-click install for your intended users’ operating system, quite effectively.
But yeah, you do sort of have to flex some limbs.
Cannot wait to see Lua come back in full force. I had used it ages ago to build World of Warcraft plugins, then came back with Roblox, then back again for AI.
I also recently released a server for Server-Sent Events [0] that is programmable with Lua. Overall it's been a great experience. The Rust mlua-rs crate [1] is trivially easy to integrate.
(PS. I really cheer on Lua community having a decent package manager. Couldn't resist, though)