State of the Lua ecosystem

Slide 1

Slide 1 text

State of the ecosystem Pierre Chapuis, Lua Workshop 2013

Slide 2

Slide 2 text

No content

Slide 3

Slide 3 text

Lua-the-language is successful... • games • extension language • embedded • web • ...

Slide 4

Slide 4 text

... but the community is small.

Slide 5

Slide 5 text

Lua grows in popularity, slowly and steadily... all on the power of a couple of good books, a mailing list and a simple design. Andrew Starks, lua-l

Slide 6

Slide 6 text

No one starts projects in Smalltalk anymore. And this is not because Smalltalk isn't wonderful to work with - it is. But... try just posting a question about Smalltalk to Stack Overflow and see how long it takes just to get answered. Try hiring a senior Smalltalk developer - good luck. [One of them] told me that he comes to a couple of Ruby conferences every year, and I said "why don't you go to Smalltalk conferences?" and he said "because there aren't any." Sarah Mei, Why hasn't Ruby won?

Slide 7

Slide 7 text

Meyerovich & Rabkin, OOPSLA 2013

Slide 8

Slide 8 text

No content

Slide 9

Slide 9 text

Standard libraries

Slide 10

Slide 10 text

Five years ago, I always assumed the Python library contained the “best of breed” for all packages. These days, I tend to think the opposite. Dusty Phillips, Dead Batteries Included

Slide 11

Slide 11 text

The standard library is where modules go to die. Kenneth Reitz, Djangocong 2012

Slide 12

Slide 12 text

No content

Slide 13

Slide 13 text

No content

Slide 14

Slide 14 text

Penlight

Slide 15

Slide 15 text

Contributed modules

Slide 16

Slide 16 text

Wanted • quantity: There is no module to solve my problem. • quality: New dependency, new bugs :( Where is the maintainer? • ease of use: How do I install this without breaking my system? • consistency: Why does my application depend on 25 object libraries? • discoverability: I cannot find what module solves that problem.

Slide 17

Slide 17 text

Quantity There is no module to solve my problem.

Slide 18

Slide 18 text

No content

Slide 19

Slide 19 text

Number of modules in the package managers for some dynamic languages.

Slide 20

Slide 20 text

Quality (1) New dependency, new bugs :(

Slide 21

Slide 21 text

No content

Slide 22

Slide 22 text

The root of all Evil • Avoid globals in modules. • local foo = require "foo" • Use pl.strict in your test suite (please). • You have tests, don't you?!

Slide 23

Slide 23 text

luafun

Slide 24

Slide 24 text

Quality (2) Where is the maintainer?

Slide 25

Slide 25 text

Ease of use How do I install this without breaking my system?

Slide 26

Slide 26 text

Number of modules divided by number of GitHub repositories created from Jan 2012 to Aug 2013.

Slide 27

Slide 27 text

People still do not use LuaRocks enough

Slide 28

Slide 28 text

Pester maintainers, it works!

Slide 29

Slide 29 text

Consistency Why does my application depend on 25 object libraries?

Slide 30

Slide 30 text

No content

Slide 31

Slide 31 text

Contribute instead of reinventing

Slide 32

Slide 32 text

No content

Slide 33

Slide 33 text

At least share an API

Slide 34

Slide 34 text

Incompatible ecosystems • 5.2 • LuaJIT • Luvit • OpenResty • probably others I have no answer to that.

Slide 35

Slide 35 text

Discoverability I cannot find what module solves that problem.

Slide 36

Slide 36 text

Finding a module • LuaRocks • Lua Wiki • Google • Github • Mailing List • Stack Overflow

Slide 37

Slide 37 text

Finding the best module

Slide 38

Slide 38 text

No content

Slide 39

Slide 39 text

Suggestions Let's open discussions.

Slide 40

Slide 40 text

Programmatic releases for LuaRocks

Slide 41

Slide 41 text

Multiple maintainers for "Core" libraries • LuaSocket • LuaFileSystem • LuaSec / LuaCrypto • LuaExpat

Slide 42

Slide 42 text

style guide

Slide 43

Slide 43 text

Yes, I know that Lua module naming in the wild is a total train wreck. This is one of the biggest failures of the Lua ecosystem. Language ecosystems with user-contributed modules demand curation. Or at least some officially sanctioned conventions. Remember that next time you create your own language. Anything that attempts to retain the illusion that a flat namespace is somehow a workable solution is NOT helpful. Mike Pall, LuaJIT ML