tl VS luaforwindows

it's based off MIR, does it have something to do with https://mlir.llvm.org/ ?

for typed lua, there is another effort https://github.com/teal-language/tl in addition to the mentioned typescript approach: https://github.com/andremm/typedlua

I had the pleasure of working with Lua 5.1 back in the late noughties. For me it's replaced Tcl whenever I want something I can configure above a C library. At the time I used it I found it quite nice but I'll also not forget the hours I wasted tracking down nil table corruptions which could have easily been caught by a type checker.

I had some hope that Luau https://luau-lang.org or Teal https://github.com/teal-language/tl would make things better but with the following example

    function foo(x: number): string

I wonder why the author doesn't use Teal [0] - a typed dialect of lua.

[O] https://github.com/teal-language/tl

Check out Teal

There is already https://github.com/teal-language/tl, which is typed Lua. I think fennel exists to serve a different niche-- personally I use it not for any type features; I just like the syntax better, and others may find certain features like the macro system useful.

There's also some languages made to compile straight to Lua: - MoonScript is the most popular Lua wrapper - it's built to be more Python-like, featuring indentation-based scopes, function calls without parentheses, lambda syntax, list comprehension, and much more. - Yuescript is a modern update to MoonScript that adds more features (I haven't used it myself, so I'm not entirely sure exactly how it differs from MS). - Teal is a version of Lua that adds static typing for better code standards.

Terra and Nelua are both very different in goals than Teal. Teal is literally gradual types integrated into Lua keeping as many of Lua's idioms as possible (to a fault[1]). Terra and Nelua are both very metaprogrammable systems programming languages. Nelua's goals are primarily to soften C's rough edges, comparable to something like Nim.

There's another one you missed in Pallene[2]. But again, it's goal was to optimize the stack sharing involved in using the C API. It also adds types though and maintains Lua idioms as much as possible.

[1]: https://github.com/teal-language/tl/discussions/339

[2]: https://github.com/pallene-lang/pallene

However, after installing the package Lua For Windows, that apparently installs the tools in the infamous WindowsApps folder, I can't run lua from the zsh terminal, getting this error:

If you're trying to install for Windows, https://github.com/rjpcomputing/luaforwindows

Earlier, I submitted Lua For Windows to the Winget repository.

I had to resort to going here: https://github.com/rjpcomputing/luaforwindows/releases to get Lua bundled with a bunch of libraries, including IUP. It's out-of-date (Lua 5.1), but that's what CityBinder was made with anyway, so maybe it doesn't matter? It comes with SciTE to edit with.

I had a Windows installation of 'luaForWindows' that, for some reason stopped working. It stopped working in the following way. I could load a lua interpreter, but each time I ran a lua script I got an error about unexpected symbol near ' '. (What a helpful message!) Previously I had uninstalled some Visual C libraries. Reinstalling the libraries, and indeed reinstalling luaForWindows, did not help. I discovered that luaForWindows looked unmaintained so I got lua binaries (in the x64 version) from SourceForge, marvelled at the lack there - or almost anywhere - of instructions, and did the following.

Having a set of "blessed" libraries has definitely been discussed on the mailing list. Also there are plenty of "distributions" like Lua for Windows[1], LuaPower[2], or runtimes like Luvit[3] that add features ootb.

That said - the Lua ecosystem in 2021 is not the same as it was in 2005 or whenever people compare it to. There is a healthy amount of Libraries and choices of libraries for solving most tasks on Luarocks. And I would suggest you produce a better end project by selecting which libraries are included in your project that uses Lua for scripting. You can even further remove your choice of the libraries that _are_ included ootb.

[1] - https://github.com/rjpcomputing/luaforwindows

[2] - https://luapower.com/

[3] - http://luvit.io/