Lua in the bootloader

[Pedro Giffuni]

On 08/25/14 01:27, Jordan Hubbard wrote:
> ...
>> The limitation of the dictionary and the size of the stack isn't the main reason why I would prefer lua over forth.  Why do we need to subject ourselves to a stack based language in 2014?  The very limited number of people hacking on the Forth boot loader on FreeBSD might have a different opinion, but the language is so arcane that I fail to see why we shouldn't replace it.
> Again, no disagreement, though I do wonder how many Lua programmers FreeBSD has that will be able to hit the ground running as a result of this evolution.  Anyone?  Raise your hands!   I can’t raise mine - I’ve never used Lua. :)
>
> - Jordan

One one hand we have Forth which seems to be under-appreciated. I would 
think that it is still better than nothing, but then nothing is what 
other people use and they are not complaining (perhaps because they 
don't know what they are missing? I don't know).

On the other hand there is Lua: If we do a quick look in the net for Lua 
related code we can find many examples. It seems like there is a new 
generation of game developers that are very fond of Lua, to the point 
that it is more popular than Python in gaming. Other than Angry Birds, I 
am also seeing Lua embedded in Apache httpd, Trafficserver, VLC, there 
is even a Forth implemented in Lua! To put it someway: Lua absolutely 
looks better than forth in your resume.

FWIW, although somewhat oldish, this looks like an interesting thing to 
play with
http://lua-cui.sourceforge.net/

And there's also this:
https://code.google.com/p/llvm-lua/

No equivalents for Forth, AFAICT.

This said, while Lua seems to be powerful and exciting, it is not the 
mighty thing we want everywhere. Apparently Grub2 at some point embedded 
Lua and later reverted it. NetBSD introduced Lua in their kernel but 
apparently has found no use for it. DragonFly's installer had an old Lua 
backend that they removed (they also removed bootforth very early).

Options are good, I welcome the Lua option and I will love to see how 
far it goes but let's not get too excited about the imminent death of 
Forth just yet. Ultimately, being Devin the driving force behind the 
bootloader enhancements, I think he is in the best position to choose.

Pedro.