lua [ was: Bash shell support? ]

Rob Landley rob at landley.net
Wed Aug 30 16:43:32 UTC 2006


On Tuesday 29 August 2006 8:40 am, Roberto A. Foglietta wrote:
>  We would appreciate very much a scripting language which interpreter
> could be compiled against busybox library in order to reduce the
> overall size.
> 
>  I think soon or later you will decide to have a directories for
> contribution or a separate project as rootbox which using bbox library
> allow people to have a lot of funny thinks to enjoy embedded.

Ok, remember how when libbb.so went in my main complaint was that I have no 
interest in trying to export a stable API for use by third party projects, 
and people were going to assume that we were, but that I was warning them 
loudly up front that I refused to get tangled up in that unsupportable mess?

>  Lua in other hand should help to simplify bbox converting some
> applets which not require the powerfull of C (almost all which should
> not need syscall) in scripts which, I suppose, will have some
> advantages: smaller size, could be modified/fixed without compiling
> anything, portability.

BusyBox is written in C.  We have enough trouble getting developers on the 
same page with one implementation language.  And requiring a 40k lua 
interpreter for what would otherwise be a 6k app is just silly.

If you want to reimplement busybox applets in lua, have at.  Feel free.  I'm 
all for this.  I have no interest in looking at the result, but go for it.  
Start with tomsrtbt, they've already done some of this.

Rob
-- 
Never bet against the cheap plastic solution.



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