6 ms·

Is LuaJIT still under active development? I thought the developer had walked away. With Torch also looking dead, that use case is gone, too. Roblox has their ow

by newobj 6y ago

Is LuaJIT still under active development? I thought the developer had walked away. With Torch also looking dead, that use case is gone, too. Roblox has their own Lua VM now. I love Lua and code in it almost every day for fun, but yeah I'm pretty sure LuaJIT is just "done" now?

BugsJustFindMe 6y ago
The git repo weirdly continues to get periodic updates. I think it just doesn't get features anymore?
cardanome 6y ago
LuaJit is simply feature complete. There are is nothing to add to it. The newer versions of Lua basically implemented features that LuaJit already had or that would mean a performance trade off. I am still using Lua 5.1 (which is from 2012) because there is no reason to upgrade. If you design something well, you don't need to push new features every year. Stability is underrated.
- pansa2 6y ago
  > There is nothing to add to it. I'm not sure that's true. Maybe LuaJIT was never going to add the features it's missing from Lua 5.2, 5.3 and 5.4. However, when Mike Pall stepped back in 2015 [0], he had still been planning to further improve the implementation - for example with a new garbage collector [1] and "hyperblock scheduling" [2] (which remain unimplemented), plus 64-bit pointer support (which was eventually completed by other people). [0] https://www.freelists.org/post/luajit/Looking-for-new-LuaJIT-maintainers https://www.freelists.org/post/luajit/Looking-for-new-LuaJIT... [1] http://wiki.luajit.org/New-Garbage-Collector http://wiki.luajit.org/New-Garbage-Collector [2] https://github.com/LuaJIT/LuaJIT/issues/37 https://github.com/LuaJIT/LuaJIT/issues/37
  - ksec 6y ago
    I think he dislike the direction Lua was moving and he doesn't intend to implement any of those newer Lua features. So he stopped working on it. I am wondering what is Mike Pall working on now.
- Rochus 6y ago
  It's not feature complete. Have a look at e.g. http://wiki.luajit.org/NYI http://wiki.luajit.org/NYI E.g. closures are not yet supported by the JIT; notwithstanding this, it is a great and still very useful technology.
- johnisgood 6y ago
  I wish this was more common. People hated my guts when I said that software can be finished. It definitely can! It does not mean that there will not be reported bug fixes fixed, or security issues patched, but there will not be features added and so forth. All in all, software can be finished!
  - johnisgood 6y ago
    Correction: s/reported bug fixes fixed/reported bugs fixed/
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
    I have had people on HN argue against comments that suggested software can be finished. They refuse to acknowledge that any program could ever be finished. They also believe all software, no matter how relatively small or simple, has bugs. It is absolutely baffling. Job security fears I guess. There are so many incompetent software developers. These beliefs protect them from having to face their incomeptence.
    - johnisgood 6y ago
      Yeah, I agree. We live in frameworks built upon other frameworks sorta world. We do not learn how to code, we learn how to use specific frameworks that will get replaced by a fancier one 2 years later. That, and most package repository browsers have statistics and people are racing. How many times has it been downloaded? How many projects use it? How many stars did it get? The more one liners you submit as a package, the better, it seems, as well.
moonchild 6y ago
It gets maintained, but that's pretty much it. Last commit was a small fix ~2 months ago. I had high hopes for moonjit, but development on it has ceased. There are other forks—openresty and raptorjit come to mind—but they don't have feature parity.
- Rochus 6y ago
  Jan 12 2021? See https://github.com/LuaJIT/LuaJIT/commits/v2.1 https://github.com/LuaJIT/LuaJIT/commits/v2.1
  - moonchild 6y ago
    The last actual code change was jan 2. Still closer to one month than two, though.
tobylane 6y ago
https://github.com/openresty/luajit2 https://github.com/openresty/luajit2 It has a few extras but they agree with the original luajit authors opinion that not every 5.2 feature can be made in jit.
zucker42 6y ago
Isn't there an implementation maintained by OpenResty?

by newobj 6y ago

BugsJustFindMe 6y ago

The git repo weirdly continues to get periodic updates. I think it just doesn't get features anymore?

cardanome 6y ago

LuaJit is simply feature complete. There are is nothing to add to it. The newer versions of Lua basically implemented features that LuaJit already had or that would mean a performance trade off. I am still using Lua 5.1 (which is from 2012) because there is no reason to upgrade. If you design something well, you don't need to push new features every year. Stability is underrated.

pansa2 6y ago
> There is nothing to add to it. I'm not sure that's true. Maybe LuaJIT was never going to add the features it's missing from Lua 5.2, 5.3 and 5.4. However, when Mike Pall stepped back in 2015 [0], he had still been planning to further improve the implementation - for example with a new garbage collector [1] and "hyperblock scheduling" [2] (which remain unimplemented), plus 64-bit pointer support (which was eventually completed by other people). [0] https://www.freelists.org/post/luajit/Looking-for-new-LuaJIT-maintainers https://www.freelists.org/post/luajit/Looking-for-new-LuaJIT... [1] http://wiki.luajit.org/New-Garbage-Collector http://wiki.luajit.org/New-Garbage-Collector [2] https://github.com/LuaJIT/LuaJIT/issues/37 https://github.com/LuaJIT/LuaJIT/issues/37
- ksec 6y ago
  I think he dislike the direction Lua was moving and he doesn't intend to implement any of those newer Lua features. So he stopped working on it. I am wondering what is Mike Pall working on now.
Rochus 6y ago
It's not feature complete. Have a look at e.g. http://wiki.luajit.org/NYI http://wiki.luajit.org/NYI E.g. closures are not yet supported by the JIT; notwithstanding this, it is a great and still very useful technology.
johnisgood 6y ago
I wish this was more common. People hated my guts when I said that software can be finished. It definitely can! It does not mean that there will not be reported bug fixes fixed, or security issues patched, but there will not be features added and so forth. All in all, software can be finished!
- johnisgood 6y ago
  Correction: s/reported bug fixes fixed/reported bugs fixed/
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
  I have had people on HN argue against comments that suggested software can be finished. They refuse to acknowledge that any program could ever be finished. They also believe all software, no matter how relatively small or simple, has bugs. It is absolutely baffling. Job security fears I guess. There are so many incompetent software developers. These beliefs protect them from having to face their incomeptence.
  - johnisgood 6y ago
    Yeah, I agree. We live in frameworks built upon other frameworks sorta world. We do not learn how to code, we learn how to use specific frameworks that will get replaced by a fancier one 2 years later. That, and most package repository browsers have statistics and people are racing. How many times has it been downloaded? How many projects use it? How many stars did it get? The more one liners you submit as a package, the better, it seems, as well.

moonchild 6y ago

It gets maintained, but that's pretty much it. Last commit was a small fix ~2 months ago. I had high hopes for moonjit, but development on it has ceased. There are other forks—openresty and raptorjit come to mind—but they don't have feature parity.

Rochus 6y ago
Jan 12 2021? See https://github.com/LuaJIT/LuaJIT/commits/v2.1 https://github.com/LuaJIT/LuaJIT/commits/v2.1
- moonchild 6y ago
  The last actual code change was jan 2. Still closer to one month than two, though.

tobylane 6y ago

https://github.com/openresty/luajit2 https://github.com/openresty/luajit2 It has a few extras but they agree with the original luajit authors opinion that not every 5.2 feature can be made in jit.

zucker42 6y ago

Isn't there an implementation maintained by OpenResty?