lua [ was: Bash shell support? ]

Natanael Copa natanael.copa at gmail.com
Sat Aug 26 23:50:01 UTC 2006


On Sat, 2006-08-26 at 15:33 -0400, Rob Landley wrote:
> On Friday 25 August 2006 8:50 pm, Juergen Hennerich wrote:
> > Rob Landley schrieb:
> >

> > Without doubt it is a good idea to have an as small as possible as bash
> > compatible as possible shell in BB. On the other side, if there are no
> > legacy scripts to be used, wouldn't it make more sense, to use a smaller
> > ,more basic SHell and have additionally a more robust scripting language
> > also in BB. About 1 1/2 years ago, I put Lua into BB, which added about
> > 50k. There weren't even any special BB functions used, which could have
> > saved a few extra kB. While Lua is not really one of my most favorite
> > programming languages, it has without doubt the biggest bang for the
> > buck (size wise).
> 
> I'd be willing to look at a 50k lua patch.  It's at the high end of what I
> consider a reasonable applet, but this is one I know is in real-world use
> (even though it's a language I haven't personally picked up yet).

I am in the middle of a deep long discussion on what langeuage to pick
for a web interface to configure a linux router++ distro.

lua have been mentioned (its small, we have been counting with 200k) and
php is mentioned. The biggest benefit with php is probably that its easy
to get contributors. Everyone knows php. (but it is 3MB)

Now if lua will make it to mainstream busybox, then lua sounds very much
more interesting.

Is it realistic to expect it to go into busybox 1.3?

> I first encountered lua a year or two back because it was the scripting
> language the tomsrtbt floppy used.  And tomsrtbt is actually how I first
> encountered busybox (years and years ago).  It seems to be coming out of
> nowhere because it emerged from Brazil and got fairly mature with a large
> user base before being translated into english.  (Brazil also gave us
> Connectiva, and Marcello Tosatti the (now ex-) 2.4 maintainer, also seemingly
> out of the blue...)
> 
> Rob
> --
> Never bet against the cheap plastic solution.
> _______________________________________________
> busybox mailing list
> busybox at busybox.net
> http://busybox.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/busybox




More information about the busybox mailing list