[Monotone-devel] Re: Warning: monotone can't use system wide LUA! , was Re: Always uses bundled SQLite/LUA (error in autoconf.ac)

[graydon hoare]

Christof Petig wrote:

> Graydon: Do you (or any LUA wizard out there) know any way to make the 
> LUA error messages more meaningful? [You don't get a single hint about 
> which syntactic/logic error you made and where it was]

yes, there is a way to get better error messages from lua. I am sorry 
you experienced this; I'll try to make the error messages clearer.

> Do you plan to support a standard lua in the future (e.g. move the 
> function out of the subfolder into a normal lua extension)?

I could register it as a function that monotone provides when it 
initializes lua. that will work with other luas. since this bothers you, 
and is relatively easy to fix, I will change it to do so.

however, a word of explanation:

I would like to point out that the bundling in monotone is quite 
intentional. like bsd/linux distributions (or proprietary programs), 
pegging specific versions and making local patches reduces my support 
costs, by reducing the number of variants I might see a user running in 
the field. bundling and making local modifications is a fundamental free 
software user's right, just like copying and pasting.

I get a lot of feedback from users that this is somehow impure or 
incorrect, and that the "right" thing to do is always use system 
libraries. this may be moral, but it also increases costs, both in 
development (configury, testing, releases) and debugging (inability to 
reproduce, number of variant bug sources).

I will of course try to fix such bugs -- in the case of lua here it is 
relatively easy -- but un-bundling really does add real time costs to my 
work on monotone. I'd very much prefer if people could refrain from it 
unless strictly necessary.

-graydon