I'm trying to learn Lua, but I don't really know which binary to download. There's 2 choices:
Lua Binaries
Lua for Windows
The second option Lua for Windows seems to be the recommended option, but the installer weighs in at 26.6Mb, which is pretty hefty for what is supposed to be a v.lightweight language.
I'm thinking of using Lua as a scripting language for games, and perhaps as a fast development language for file processing like how Python or Ruby does it. So it must be something lightweight, not a 26.6Mb file.
Which is the appropriate one to download and start?
Luaforwindows, no doubt. It's simpler, easier and faster.
The installer comes with lots of stuff (Scite editor & several extra libs if I remember well). But the installer asks you before installing all those extra stuff. Just install the minimum and you will be fine.
Lua for Windows includes a handful of other, useful libraries and tools. The actual Lua executable included is still tiny, in the 1-2MB range as expected.
Having the extras there already will only make things easier, and disk space is cheap: go with Lua for Windows.
You may also want to check ZeroBrane Studio, which is only 4M download on Windows and is based on the same editor as SciTE that comes with Lua for Windows. ZBS also comes with 50+ Lua examples and few simple lessons to get started quickly with Lua programming.
Quoting from here.
Installation
The LuaBinaries files are intended for advanced users and programmers who want to incorporate Lua in their applications or distributions and would like to keep compatibility with LuaBinaries, so they also will be compatible with many other modules available on the Internet.
If what you want is a full Lua installation, please check other projects such as the Lua for Windows and LuaRocks.
Seems quite clear to me that you should download Lua for Windows.
Related
I need to create a Lua binary for Windows that is fully portable, meaning that I can have it on a flash drive and it will work on any Windows computer (well, Windows 7 computer). I need at least a few additional libraries including Lua socket, a library that allows the proper storage (without rounding at all) and computation of large numbers (around 81 digits in total), and the rs232 library.
The problem is that I don't know how to compile them together into a binary, or if I can use some method to just use a plain Lua binary and use require to add the others. I've been researching this for a long time (a few weeks now) and haven't been able to find a solution. If anyone can help, it would be greatly appreciated.
If it makes the process any easier, I do have a Linux operating system I can use if necessary.
Answer: if you are using Windows, you can get the .dll files for each library and add them to your Lua directory. I now have a version of Lua with all of the libraries I wanted, plus a few more. Thank you everyone for your help.
I have downloaded the sources, then... I don't know what I'm supposed to do.
I think that we have to compile these, but I'm not really familiar with java.
Do you have a complete example for use it ?
The java2dart tool was written for Google's own use, to help convert many of the tools from Java into Dart. Is was not intended to support conversion of all Java apps; just what was required to get things like the IDE tools (Analyzer, etc.) into Dart.
As such, there's not a huge amount of info on what it can/can't do or the best way to use it. It is written in Java, and there doesn't appear to be a pre-built binary; so it would almost certainly involve compiling the Java yourself. Unfortunately I have almost zero experience with Java (or fortunately, depending on your point of view :))
You can find a little info on this in the Dart Google Group here:
https://groups.google.com/a/dartlang.org/d/msg/misc/4mSK-M7dm2U/ARbTh6emb-sJ
I wonder whether anyone has tried running java2dart on java2dart to get a nice Dart version? :) Or even then running it through dart2js to get a JavaScript version! ;)
How can I build and compile my own Lua files on Windows? And make them executable.
I am reading Beginning Lua programming, and I have Windows 7 and MacOS Lion both installed. I am having the hard time to follow the instructions. They do not work for me.
On MacOS I open the terminal and put these in:
export LUA_DIR=/usr/local/lib/lua/5.1
mkdir -p /usr/local/lib/lua/5.1 (it tells me, mkdir: illegal option) and I can not follow from here
SET LUA_DIR=”c:\program files\lua\5.1”
As for Windows I do this according to the book.
This what I see in my shell c:\Users\bd>
mkdir "c:\program files\utility" and it tells me access is denied
I have tried to right click on this folder and check off read only, but it does not work.
Any clues would be appreciated, this part has been really confusing for me.
To package your Lua files into an executable on Windows you have several options. There is srlua, there is wxLuaFreeze from wxLua (available as a binary for Windows), and there are more options in this SO answer.
Essentially, the main two options are: (1) append your Lua code to a precompiled exe file, such that it will be loaded and executed when that exe file is run, and (2) convert your Lua code into real executable by compiling it to bytecode, then to C, and then to your target platform.
As to your MacOS issue, mkdir -p means that mkdir is asked to create intermediate directories (for example, you asked to create /a/b/c, it will also create /a/b if those don't exist). As you don't say which version of MacOS you run, it's difficult to provide more detailed answer.
For now the standard distribution of Lua does not compile a script to native executable code; it execute your scripts by first compiling it to bytecode, then by interpreting the bytecode with a reasonnably fast static interpret (this also means that it is easily portable across native or virtual systems, and very resistant to attacks (that could be targetting bugs in the native compiler itself).
Also Lua still does not feature a runtime JIT compiler like Java and .Net: Lua still does not features a VM to produce a safe sandbox.
There exists Lua packages that convert your bytecode (or directly a source script) to a C source that can be used to convert a Lua library into native mode via the same C compiler used to compile the Lua engine itself (this is how the builtin libraries are produced, though they are slightly optimized manually in some time-critical parts).
However it is possible to compile Lua to a javascript source, and run it with fast performance using Javascript, because today's Javascript interprets do have good performance with their implemented VM featuring a JIT compiler for their own bytecodes.
It is also possible by converting it the Lua bytecode to a .Net or Java source that can then be executed directly from Lua (for that you need a version of Lua that has been ported to .Net or Java or Javascript, something that is not so complicate than developing in C/C++ directly a VM with a JIT compiler (a moderately complex part is the bytecode verifier, but the really complex part is the memory manager its garbage collector and its sandbox so that your Lua script will be fully isolated from the Lua engine itself for itw own memory, but the most complex part if the runtime optimizer and collection of profiling statistics: this has been done in the modern VMs for Java, .Net, Javascript, PHP/Zend, Python, Perl...).
I dont know which other language VM would offer the best performance to port Lua and implement on it a compiler to their own bytecode running at near native speed in their VM. But my own small experience with programs (in a much simpler language) self-generating a bytecode that they can run themselves, has always shown me Java winning in performance over .Net and Javascript. This is most probably because Java features an profiling-based dynamic code optimizer
(On the opposite the .Net optimizer runs only once during program installation, using some profiling data collected during the installation of the .Net VM itself, or at first instanciation of the script, without really knowing any profiling data collected during execution of the compiled program itself, and based on some cheked assumptions about the platform capabilities).
I also don't if would be faster in PHP, Python or Perl; the comparison with newer Javascript engines was never attempted though. Porting/compiling a Lua program to Javascript is relatively easy because it implements closures relatively easy for the resolution of linkages. Then the generated Javascript will compile to native code with the excellent Javascript's JIT compilers we have today (and never cease to improve in performance, so much that I've seen various appliactions running now faster in Javascript than before when they were written in C++ or plain C; as well the memory footprint has largely been reduced, we no longer have memory leaks, and even if there's a garbage collector, today's Javascript VM have a very efficient one, which is even better than the GC implemented in the native Lua).
But Lua remains useful as it is easy to secure and sandbox and offers various security benefits (but there are security issues in Lua as well for some kinds of applications, where Javascript offers some solutions, notably for side-channel attacks based on variation of time of execution; but these side-channel attacks are very hard to solve and can affect any system, any program, any programming language, and this starts becoming a critical issue because they are now more esily exploitable; the reason of that comes from hardware optimizations that we depend more and more today when we want to maximize the performances). And with Lua you may be more immune to these problems that a sandboxing sofware environment cannot solve alone.
Probably later we'll see a true VM implementation of Lua with a JIT and self-generating code and the possibility to instanciate new sandboxed VMs to run their self-generated code. It will take more time to generate an EXE file for distribution; notably because it generally requires adding also an installer and a distribution manager.
So for now we could imagine distributing Lua applications compiled to the bytecode of another JIT-capable VM: this generated bytecode would be faster than the Lua bytecode, and would then be extremely complex to reverse-engineer to the semantics of Lua because it would require two separate reverse engineering first from the bytecode of the other VM to the bytecode of Lua, both bytecodes loosing some easiy inferable rules and options tested and foll, and then again to sme Lua source
For the OSX terminal issue:
This command should work
export LUA_DIR=/usr/local/lib/lua/5.1
This command will probably give you permission problems:
mkdir -p /usr/local/lib/lua/5.1
You may try this to solve that. You will be prompted for your password:
sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/lib/lua/5.1
This command has nothing to do with OSX and will not work. This is a windows command:
SET LUA_DIR=”c:\program files\lua\5.1”
You have a permissions problem with Windows- try creating your cmd or PowerShell in Administrator mode. C:\Program Files is a protected directory that a regular user account doesn't have permission to write to.
As for the OS X issue, check out the mkdir OS X manual page to make sure you have the command correct.
So, if I understood your question correctly, you are trying to build Lua on Windows.
This is of course possible, but not easy for beginners. I would highly recommend you to use a binary distribution, which is much easier to install, unless you have special requirements.
Here are several Windows distributions :
Lua Binaries (Lua 5.1 and 5.2)
LuaForWindows (Lua 5.1)
LuaDist (Lua 5.2)
I downloaded Lazarus, but have worked with Embarcadero Delphi IDE too. I have a question about building cross-platform Delphi applications.
How can I build them under win32 environment? I read the wiki from Lazarus site, that explains how to do it, but I still do not understand it. Is is possible to build and compile application under win32 environment for Linux and MacOS? If it is possible, can someone explain ste-by-step how to do it exactly.
EDIT:
Now is the time for talking about the new XE2 version of the Delphi IDE I think :)
Thanks
What you're asking for already exists in the lazarus wiki site, you need to read these articles.
Multiplatform Programming Guide
Cross compiling
Cross compiling for Win32 under Linux
How to Write Portable Code (nice doc from Marco van de Voort)
Buildfaq
While crosscompiling to a non windows target is possible (and not that hard), getting used to fpc/lazarus and crosscompiling in one first step is a bridge too far. This because Linux is not a very homogenous target and dealing with this variation requires some understanding how libraries and linking works on Linux. This defeats one-button downloadable cross-compile setups to "general" linux. I know, such one-button thingies that work out of the box for everyone would be great, but it is just not going to happen (or only forvery limited distribution-version combinations)
Crosscompiling with FPC is not extremely difficult or rocket science, but the amount of jargon and details can flabbergast uninitiated people, and without background knowledge it is hard to diagnose problems as a result of minor misconfigurations
I recommend to first familiarize yourself with Lazarus/FPC, and only then make the crosscompilation leap. (and the already mentioned buildfaq names some reasons).
Bottomline: install lazarus on Windows and start porting your app. If that succeeds, start using a linux install (or VM) to familiarize yourself with Linux, and Lazarus under it. You'll need a linux install anyway to test.
Only then start thinking about crosscompiling to speed up the process.
CodeTyphon is a powerful Lazarus/FPC one click easy installation package for cross platform native development. It already supports 4 CPU/OS hosts (Win32, Win64, Linux32, Linux64), and 16 CPU/OS targets (arm-Wince, arm-Linux, arm-Embedded, arm-gba, arm-nds, i386-Win32, i386-Linux, i386-FreeBSD, i386-Haiku, x86_64-Win64, x86_64-Linux, x86_64-FreeBSD, powerpc-Linux, powerpc64-Linux, sparc-Linux, sparc-Solaris). More are supported in Lazarus/FreePascal, but others are not yet integrated in CodeTyphon. Did I mention that it is free? One code to rule them all ;-)
The point is that you don't have to waste days for setting up your cross platform environment, since someone has already done the hard work for you.
I'm using flex (lexical analyzer, not Adobe Flex) on a project. However, I want to be able to compile on Windows platforms as well, but the Windows version's newest version is only 2.5.4a, so it won't compile my file for version 2.5.35. And no, I can't downgrade to the highest supported Windows version.
Anyone know about plans to upgrade the windows version, or have a suggestion to compile on windows anyway?
You can ask on the mailing list, or get involved in the Flex project yourself. I think the code-base for Flex has remained static for a while, but I don't know who maintains the Windows port. In the interim...
I would recommend including the produced source in your project.
Generate the lexer on a Linux system to produce your lex.c/lex.h files (or whatever)
Include those files in your Win32 C source before you build
If you don't have direct access to a Linux system, a virtual machine might be a good idea. The Flex source should be complaint to some C standard that builds on Windows, but most of the POSIX differences can be altered to use Win32 API fairly easily.
Maybe distribute as:
/src/source_files.c
/src/lex.l
/src/win32_lex/lex.c
This way systems with a modern flex can generate the source from the lex file, and Windows systems compiling the source can use the complementary pre-processed C files.
Short of using some user-space POSIX (Cygwin or whatever).
A little bit of tweaking required, but isn't that portability for you!
Windows builds of flex 2.5.35 do exist, but unfortunately they are not self contained. You can download the MINGW build here, and the Cygwin build here; see also another stackoverflow question. Each build requires that its respective (MINGW or Cygwin) kernel be installed.