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drdexebtjl 2 hours ago
> It also means that libraries written in C or C++ don't need to be translated into some special Lua-specific implementation. They can remain native libraries, with a thin clx binding layer exposing the functionality to Lua.

This is already true of upstream Lua implementations. It is very easy to write thin Lua binding layers to C libraries.

That is the entire point of Lua. It’s easy to call Lua from native code, and it’s easy to call native code back from Lua, so you can have call stacks that seamlessly interweave Lua and native code.

I’m very skeptical of the idea that this can unlock improvements in performance or size. We already have LuaJIT which is plenty fast, and PUC-Lua which is so small, it runs on MCUs.

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Philpax 6 hours ago
This is of interest to me, but I have no idea why you'd set `height: 720px`. I had to turn that off to make it readable.
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wiradikusuma 6 hours ago
If it has to go through compilation process to make it native, doesn't that defeat the purpose of Lua? I mean, why not just use the same language of the host application, in other words, just another function/module of that app.
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PhilipRoman 5 hours ago
1) You can use interpreted version for rapid development and switch to compiled for release

2) You may like Lua as a language and want to use it for general purpose programming, not necessarily embedding into host program

I will say though that the performance aspect has to be taken with a grain of salt, "native compilation" is not a meaningful improvement if every source line translates to multiple branches or vtable lookups. From my experience plain conversion of Lua to C (assuming you faithfully follow the specification, including coroutines, metatables, etc.) produces equal or slower code with rare exceptions for numerical loops. If it wasn't all AI generated I'd maybe spend time understanding this project.

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_samt_ 4 days ago
A technical write‑up about the difficulties of compiling Lua to native code, based on my experience developing clx