Prerequisites
-------------
-- a 32 bits, little endian CPU
- (or the willingness to tweak the bytecode dumper by yourself)
-- a C compiler
-- Under Unix-like OSes, GNU/Make.
-- Under MS-Windows, Microsoft Visual Studio
-- optionally, your own Lua VM
-- optionally, the readline library
+- under MS-Windows, ability to type a couple of commands in a DOS command window
+- under POSIX OSes, lua and luac executables in your path, in versions >=5.1
MS-Windows
----------
-You need to:
-- edit metalua\src\win32\make-win32-msvc.bat, and set the
- user configuration:
- * The directory where you want to put your libs and executables,
- MUALIB_TARGET.
- * The directory where the compiler and linker are,
- MSVCDIR.
-
-- open a DOS shell in metalua\src, and run the batch file above:
- d:\fabien\src\metalua\src> win32\make-win32-msvc
-
-- Set your environment variables. A script metalua\src\mlua_setenv.bat
- must have been generated, which contains the appropriate
- settings. If you want to commit these setting permanently, you'll
- have to set them in "My Computer" <right-click> "Properties" <click>
- "Adanced settings" <click> "Environment variables".
-
-Mingw
------
-There is also a migw port, which hasn't been tested for a while and is
-likely to be broken. I'd be grateful if someone provided a patch for
-this. I've never tried to compile it under cygwin either, patches are
-welcome.
-
-Un*x
+- get the sources
+- cd metalua\src
+- edit make.bat to set your variables:
+ * DISTRIB_BIN: where you want to put executables metalua.bat, lua.exe, luac.exe.
+ This directory should be referenced in your PATH environment variable.
+ * DISTRIB_LIB: where you want to put your Lua libraries. It shouldn't mess up
+ an existing Lua libraries directory. This folder should be referrenced in your
+ LUA_PATH environment variable.
+- run make.bat
+
+Unix
----
-Set your configuration in metalua/src/config:
-
-- PLATFORM is the name of the target platform for the Lua VM. You need
- a platform which supports dynamic library loading, i.e. posix is not
- OK. The most likely choices are linux, macosx, mingw, freebsd,
- openbsd.
-
-- TARGET_LUA_PATH is the place where Lua libraries will be
- installed. It points to a temporary directory by default.
-
-- TARGET_LUA_CPATH is the target directory for C libraries. Unless
- you've got a special reason not to, it's a good idea to use the same
- directory as for TARGET_LUA_PATH
-
-- TARGET_BIN_PATH is the place where binary executables will be put.
-
-Other settings should probably not be touched unless you know what
-you're doing.
-
-After the `make`, the system should be installed; the environment
-variables required to make it work are set in the generated script
-setenv.sh. To install them, either do `. setenv.sh`, or recopy them in
-your .bashrc file.
-
-Troubleshooting:
-----------------
-
-* No Readline *
-Under Linux, if you don't have readline and don't want to install it
-(e.g. you rely on rlwrap or ledit), you'll have to remove -lreadline
-from lua/Makefile, and to remove the #define LUA_USE_READLINE from
-lua/luaconf.h
-
-* Custom VM *
-If you use your own Lua VM, depending on your OS, you might have
-problems with unexported symbols required by Pluto. Pluto requires the
-symbols prefixed with LUAI_FUNC in the VM to be exported, and they
-aren't by default under Linux and Windows. This is set in luaconf.h;
-you'll need to change that setting in your own Lua VM if you want to
-use it.
-* Pluto issues *
-Alternatively, you can let metalua run without Pluto by setting the
-environment variable LUA_NOSPRINGS to "true". However, this might
-cause parasitic interactions when several source files are compiled
-simultaneously, so you'd rather precompile each file and library one
-by one.
+- get the sources
+- cd metalua/src
+- set these variables or modify them in make.sh:
+ * BUILD: a directory in which metalua should be built. Must be writable by the user.
+ * INSTALL_BIN: where metalua will be copied
+ * INSTALL_LIB: where (meta)lua libs will be copied. Should be referenced in your LUA_PATH.
+- run ./make.sh, under your UID
+- a ./make-install.sh script should have been generated, run it. If you want to isntall it
+ in a directory that doesn't belong to you, you might want to run it as root.
Test drive
----------
-There are some samples in metalua/samples, which can be rn simply by
+There are some samples in metalua/src/samples, which can be run simply by
typing in the shell `metalua samplename.mlua`. Use `metalua -h` to
have an overview of interesting options. Among them, "-a" dumps the
AST resulting from a compilation: that's the perfect learning tool for
==========
For installation matters, cf. INSTALL.TXT
-Metalua 0.4.1
-=============
+Metalua 0.5
+===========
+
Metalua is a static metaprogramming system for Lua: a set of tools
that let you alter the compilation process in arbitrary, powerful and
maintainable ways. For the potential first-time users of such a
extensions.
-Notworthy changes from 0.4 to 0.4.1
-===================================
+Noteworthy changes from 0.4.1 to 0.5
+====================================
+
+Simplification of the install and structure:
+
+- This release is included in Lua for Windows, so it now couldn't get simpler
+ for MS-Windows users!
+
+- Metalua is written in pure Lua again, thus making it platform-independant.
+ No more mandatory C libraries. Pluto interface might be back, as an option,
+ in a future version, but it's not worth the install trouble involved by
+ DLL dependencies.
+
+- Simpler build process, just run make.sh or make.bat depending on your OS.
+
+- Metalua libraries are now in a separate metalua/* package. This allows to
+ mix them with other Lua libraries, and to use them from plain Lua programs
+ if you FIXME
+
+
+Other changes:
+
+- new option -S in metalua: prints sources re-generated from AST, after macro
+ expansion.
+
+- compatible with more Lua VMs: 64 bits numbers, integral numbers, big endians...
+
+- some new extensions: xloop, xmatch, improved match.
+
+- ASTs now keep track of the source extract that generated them (API is not
+ mature though, it will be changed and broken).
+
+- improved table printer: support of a plain-Lua mode, alternative indentation
+ mode for deeply-nested tables.
+
+- added a generic table serializer, which handles shared and recursive
+ sub-tables correctly.
+
+- gg API has been made slightly more flexible, as a first step towards a
+ comprehensive syntax support for gg grammar definition. Follow the gg-syntax
+ branch on github for ongoing work.
+
+
+Noteworthy changes from 0.4 to 0.4.1
+====================================
- Proper reporting of runtime errors
- Interactive REPL loop
Credits
=======
+
I'd like to thank the people who wrote the open source code which
makes Metalua run: the Lua team, the authors of Yueliang, Pluto, Lua
Rings, Bitlib; and the people whose bug reports, patches and
insightful discussions dramatically improved the global design,
-including John Belmonte, Olivier Gournet, Vyacheslav Egorov, David
-Manura, Olivier Gournet, Eric Raible, Laurence Tratt...
+including John Belmonte, Vyacheslav Egorov, David Manura, Olivier
+Gournet, Eric Raible, Laurence Tratt, Alexander Gladysh, Ryan
+Pusztai...
projects / metalua.git / commitdiff