XLua extention beta

[Retriever2]

Hi everyone

I feel bad about doing this, but I am introducing another Lua object into the mix, due to stability problems with the existing extensions. My intention is to benefit other community members whose projects are on hold for those issues. The basic interface is similar to Jamie's Lua+ object, both because it's a good design, and to ease converting my own applications. It's by no means a direct clone though and it has different features and some different behaviors than the existing objects.

Some of the differences are:
- Embeds LuaJIT instead of normal Lua. The JIT engine is off by default but can be enabled via an action. I have a tested non-JIT build on reserve though if this turns out to not be so hot.
- Local storage, similar to alterable values and strings but without capacity or index limits, and accessible from MMF and Lua code.
- No stack operations. I believe my stack handling differs considerably from Lua+, based on having needed to clear it occasionally. There is no need (or ability) to clear it in XLua.
- Embeds the bitop library for bitwise operations.
- Aggressive error catching

XLua also has an optional MMF interface (certain individuals would kill me if I excluded it). The functions are in a separate namespace, like the standard packages. The feature set differs somewhat from Lua+, but as far as any of the setter routines go, I have no idea how to correctly or safely manipulate the internal state, so "here be dragons". The interface is disabled by default.

If you are interested in using this extension, please see the included documentation.

http://hocuspocus.taloncrossing.com/rii/xlua-dist.zip

[Pkeod]

Thanks for this!

[Corentin]

Opening the Package Library crashes the app. Just like Lua+ btw

[Retriever2]

That's interesting. I wasn't aware that was ever a problem for Lua+. Can I have more information, like what OS, what hardware platform, what version of MMF, etc that you are running?

Thank you for reporting this, I actually went and tried it and apparently I never tried loading just the package table. Fortunately it's a controlled lua-style crash (cleanly quits your program). I've put the package loading into a protected call, and it works fine now. I've updated the link in the first post.

[Corentin]

Thanks for the quick bugfix ! I think this is exactly what people want from a new LUA extension : support from it's creator (of course, no offence meant to other devs, nobody has enough time for half the projects they start).

I don't know anything about LUA, but I'll give it a try

[Corentin]

I'm testing your extension, and everything seems perfect. There was just this feature in Lua+ which I liked : An expression in Lua Functions>Call Function> Get string/number parameter

You can usually use an action to call the function and an expression to get the parameter(s), yet in a condition, it makes things a bit more complicated (this becomes 2 MMF rows instead of one).

This isn't a must-have feature, but i think it's quite handy.

EDIT : Forgot to say I like very much your extension so far, thank you very much for creating and releasing it.

[Corentin]

I've experienced an Error loading string : Out of memory. This is no real problem, but it causes a crash when leaving app (and everything seems to be messed up after such an error).

Could it be possible to load bigger scripts from a string too ?

[Retriever2]

Could you give me a sample of the script you are trying to load, and from what string source you're loading it? Does the same script load fine when run from a file?

I just tried running a 2000 line script from a string object and it seemed to be fine. I have to admit when writing that error message, it's one I never expected to turn up.

[Corentin]

In fact I see it pretty often, even with very short scripts, so I guess there's something strange appearing here...

It's pretty hard to say because i've modified the app I'm working on to use LUA instead of a custom script engine. That is to say it's far from a fresh app... I hope i'll manage to understand the problem and show it to you.

I'm glad to see I could use such a big string for my future scripts.

I'll tell you when I understand the trouble a bit better

[Corentin]

I've tracked down the bug and found way to reproduce it in a fresh app :

xLuaCrash