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The article is well-written and makes a good point that scripting languages open new avenues for OS extension. However the question remains whether Lua is the
by knz42 12y ago
The article is well-written and makes a good point that scripting languages open new avenues for OS extension.
However the question remains whether Lua is the right candidate for the job, being not-so-open yet. Obviously the hacker cultures in NetBSD world and Lua world are still quite different, so I see no official integration in any foreseeable future.
A lightweight LISP or Scheme, on the other hand, might be a good candidate for a long-term implementation of the article's claims.
- notacoward 12y agoHow is Lua "not so open"? Looks like MIT license to me, and I think most people would consider that about as open as it gets. http://www.lua.org/license.html http://www.lua.org/license.html
- fit2rule 12y agoYes, the MIT License is one of Lua's very, very key features. Those who use Lua and ship it in the millions to paying customers are only able to do so, the way they're doing it, because of the freedoms of the MIT License. Apropos Lua not being 'open', or a 'bad language', as a user of Lua on a full-spectrum approach, I can definitely say "meh!" to all nay-sayers. For every detraction, there is a significant advantage. LuaJIT, cache-coherency, access to high-performance components, well-compartmentalized, due to a simple discipline .. these are the things to love about Lua. But please, anyone not yet familiar with the subject, approach Lua not critically; from the perspective of the progressive, if you haven't grok'ed the way you can drop the VM into anything and pass it byte-code, then please do this first. Grok the VM, guys. Fact is: Lua can be glommed onto anything. Any-thing.
- jonjacky 12y agoSchemix was "a Scheme system implemented as a patch to the Linux kernel ... for exploration of the Linux kernel and for rapid, interactive prototyping of Linux drivers and other new kernel features" http://www.abstractnonsense.com/schemix/ http://www.abstractnonsense.com/schemix/ But Schemix has been inactive since 2003.
- theonewolf 12y agoActually I think Lua is a great candidate because of its openness and its similarity to C (predominant systems OS programming language). Lua is open, as their about page (http://www.lua.org/about.html http://www.lua.org/about.html) states: Lua is free Lua is free open-source software, distributed under a very liberal license (the well-known MIT license). It may be used for any purpose, including commercial purposes, at absolutely no cost. Just download it and use it.
- ufo 12y agoI wouldn't say Lua is similar to C as far as syntax and semantics goes (for example, arrays indexes start from 1). That said, Lua is great at working with C - its very easy to call C code from Lua and vice versa.
- justincormack 12y agoThe Lua module is already in NetBSD, that's pretty official integration. There is also a large overlap between people who use NetBSD and people who use Lua, probably due to the fact that they are both relatively small C based projects that try to do one thing well. Indeed the linked paper is written by two NetBSD commiters, the main author of Lua and another person on the Lua team.
- Quequau 12y agoIsn't the whole idea of Guile is that it's a lightweight Lisp intended for Operating System scripting?