Hi Jeff, On Thu, Oct 17, 2013 at 1:26 PM, Jeff Rizzo <r...@tastylime.net> wrote: > On 10/14/13 1:46 PM, Marc Balmer wrote: >> >> >>> It is entirely plausible to me that we could benefit from using Lua in >>> base, or sysinst, or maybe even in the kernel. But that argument must >>> be made by showing evidence of real, working code that has compelling >>> benefits, together with confidence in its robustness -- not by saying >>> that if we let users do it then it will happen. >> >> There is real word, real working code. In userland and in kernel space. >> There are developers waiting for the kernel parts to be committet, so >> they can continue their work as well. > > > *Where* is this code? The pattern I see happening over and over again is: > > NetBSD Community: "Please show us the real working code that needs this" > > mbalmer: "the code is there!" (pointer to actual code not in evidence) > > > I do not doubt that something exists, but the onus is on the person > proposing the import to convince the skeptics, or at least to make an actual > effort. I see lots of handwaving, and little actual code. YEARS after the > import of lua into the main tree, I see very little in-tree evidence of its > use. > > In fact, what I see is limited to : > > 1) evidence of lua bindings for netpgp. > 2) evidence of some tests in external/bsd/lutok > 3) the actual lua arc in external/mit/lua > 4) gpio and sqlite stuff in liblua > 5) some lua bindings in libexec/httpd ("bozohttpd") > 6) two example files in share/examples/lua > 7) the luactl/lua module/lua(4) stuff you imported yesterday
...and counting. There is also ongoing working happening =). > Am I missing something major here? The only actual usage I see is netpgp > and httpd; the rest is all in support of lua itself. I do not see evidence > that anyone is actually using lua in such a way that requires it in-tree. > When you originally proposed importing lua back in 2010, you talked a lot > about how uses would materialize. It's now been 3 years, and I just don't > see them. If I am wrong about this, I would love some solid pointers to > evidence of my wrongness. > > Now you're using very similar arguments for bringing lua into the kernel; I > would very much like to see some real, practical, *useful* code > demonstrating just why this is a good thing. Beyond the 'gee, whiz' factor, > I just don't see it. Lua is a tool, not an end in itself. I think that you are formulating a chicken-and-egg problem: we need the basic support for then having applications, and we need applications for then having basic support. Sure, we do not *need* a script language interpreter embedded in the kernel, as we do not need a specific file system. But I do not get why we should not. There is current development of applications being done right now. Also, there is a few interesting works that used Lunatik in Linux [1, 2] that could be done more easily now in NetBSD just because we have the right environment for that. That is not about needing, but it is about supporting a certain kind of agile development, prototyping, customization and experimentation in the NetBSD kernel (how could it be hurtful?). I think that is why we *should* (not need) have this on the tree. IMHO. [1] https://github.com/dergraf/PacketScript [2] http://www.pdsw.org/pdsw12/papers/grawinkle-pdsw12.pdf > +j > Regards, -- Lourival Vieira Neto