urn VS Penlight

There's many different languages that can compile to Lua: - TypeScript is probably the most well-known and most compatible language for Lua. The TypeScriptToLua compiler lets you compile TypeScript code into Lua with a mostly 1:1 conversion. You can use the @jackmacwindows/craftos-types and @jackmacwindows/cc-types NPM packages to add typing declarations for CraftOS APIs and modules. Alternatively, use my template repo for a more ready-to-go setup. - Haxe was built with compilation to Lua in mind, and so you can write code for it and have it run just fine in CC. There's some declarations for it available online, and I also have my own typing set for it (which I should really upload somewhere - DM me if you want it for now). - C# can also compile to Lua, but it's a bit tough to get working right in CC, as it has a huge default library and abuses the global table in a way that CC has trouble with. However, it's possible to use, and I've gotten it working in the past (unfortunately, I don't know how anymore). - Urn is a Lisp dialect that was built by two CC devs and was designed to run in CC. However, I wouldn't recommend it unless you're good with functional programming.

Also, if the microcontroller you're working with is an ESP32 chip, you may be able to use use one of the lisp-to-Lua transpiled languages (urn or fennel) with something like Lua RTOS or NodeMCU. Not entirely sure how well this works in practice, but in theory it should be possible. Of the two, Fennel's probably more likely to behave well when used like this because it's more like a thin translation layer on top of Lua, but Urn's probably going to feel more comfortable to use because it feels like this weird mix of CL and Racket design.

Urn Lisp, A Lisp implementation on top of Lua: https://urn-lang.com

I don't know how much of reloading you need. I did something like that many moons ago. See here: https://github.com/SquidDev/urn/issues/12

Clone Urn: wget run https://gist.githubusercontent.com/SquidDev/e0f82765bfdefd48b0b15a5c06c0603b/raw/clone.lua https://github.com/SquidDev/urn.git (or similar)

To have enough batteries you kind of just need penlight[1] and maybe luastd. Of course there's posix, lfs, socket, luasec and you're semi set.

[1]: https://lunarmodules.github.io/Penlight/

https://github.com/lunarmodules/Penlight provides a bunch of functionality for stuff like that.

However, there's already a widely known, well-tested library in the lua community called penlight that covers a lot of lua's "missing" functionality. It's got sane string manipulation, ergonomic tables, a basic class mechanism, functional programming, enums, exceptions, path manipulation, etc...

Lua is a small language and its "standard library" is very minimal. Lua's intended for embedding so usually the host program provides a broader standard library by exposing functions to lua. However, there are several standard library packages for lua: batteries and lume are focused on gamedev; Penlight aims at bringing the breadth of python's stdlib to lua; plenary.nvim for nvim plugins; and probably more for other domains. I'd definitely recommend checking these out to help get closer to functionality level of most other languages (I use both lume and batteries, but dropped penlight awhile back because I found some implementations confusing/overcomplicated/inconsistent).

Lua is a small language and its "standard library" is very minimal. This was one of my initial roadblocks. Lua's intended for embedding so usually the host program provides a broader standard library by exposing functions to lua. However, there are several standard library packages for lua: batteries, Penlight, or the aforementioned lume. I'd definitely recommend checking these out to help get closer to functionality level of most other languages (I use both lume and batteries, but dropped penlight awhile back).

As for batteries, there's things like penlight which comes with a huge set of pure Lua libraries inspired by Python. And, well, there's Fennel libraries with macros and more lispy style APIs.

I'm very surprised there was no mention of Penlight in that article. Penlight, a supplemental standard library for Lua that is heavily inspired by Python's own standard library, has been around for years now:

https://github.com/lunarmodules/Penlight