5.1.5 was the final release of version 5.1 in 2012. 5.2.4 was the final release of version 5.2 and that was 3 years ago. 5.3.5 was released this month and work has begun on version 5.4. I know it’s painful to make a move like this but are there any plans to ever move ahead? It doesn’t seem reasonable to stand still indefinitely.
That’s because OpenWRT, which is the OS distribution underlying, seems to be stuck on 5.1.5, I’m not hopeful. There are people who have been successful building newer versions for OpenWRT, but that’s not yet in the official distribution, and I doubt Vera would spend any engineering time duplicating that effort and taking on the risk of deploying such a key facility that isn’t certified for the distribution.
I think you have to ask “why”?
Lua is a tiny language which, from the outset was meticulously designed to be concise, compact, transportable, and easy to use. It’s a huge credit to the implementers that the things which make it so attractive have changed so little since its inception.
If you look at the development history, outlined here: https://www.lua.org/versions.html, then you’ll see:
5.2
Its main new features are yieldable pcall and metamethods, new lexical scheme for globals, ephemeron tables, new library for bitwise operations, light C functions, emergency garbage collector, goto statement, and finalizers for tables.
5.3
Its main new features are integers, bitwise operators, a basic utf-8 library, and support for both 64-bit and 32-bit platforms.
5.4
Work on Lua 5.4 has begun but there is no release date yet nor a roadmap.
- new generational mode for garbage collection
- userdata can have multiple user values
- debug information about function arguments and returns
- new implementation for math.random
I don’t believe that most casual users would care much about the 5.2 additions, or even know what they meant. 5.1 already has metamethods, coroutines, ephemeral tables, etc. It seems to me that it’s really rather few problems which actually need more than this.
In 5.3, integers are more of an internal thing, there are already bit libraries, but I would grant that utf-8 support might be desirable for systems development. However, just for home automation logic…?
I must admit that I am a huge fan of Lua. I have to thank Vera for introducing me to the language. I chose 5.1 as the implementation language for openLuup, simply to be compatible with Vera. Whilst I’m confident that I could upgrade to 5.2 and beyond (significant changes in function environments due to the lexical scheme for globals, would be the main task) the concept of Vera/MiOS doing so fills me with dread… ever had a problem with one of their firmware upgrades…?
This happens to be my 6000-th post, and I’m very happy that it turns out to be an opportunity to extol the virtues of Lua, whatever the version number you care to choose.
Congrats, akbooer, and thank you for all of your contributions!
+1
Congrats on your 6K post count anniversary, akbooer.
And thanks for sharing your knowledge for all these years.
Thanks all! It’s great to be able to contribute to the community.
I wasn’t going for plaudits, but I’ll take that!
Isn’t there a job opportunity at vera? If akboer will join probably development and support will go to the next level making vera the platform with the potential that it could and should have 
(ps. there are more toppers around on this forum Vera ;))
I totally support this idea as well!!!
[quote=“akbooer, post:3, topic:199571”]I think you have to ask “why”?
Lua is a tiny language which, from the outset was meticulously designed to be concise, compact, transportable, and easy to use. It’s a huge credit to the implementers that the things which make it so attractive have changed so little since its inception.
If you look at the development history, outlined here: https://www.lua.org/versions.html, then you’ll see:
5.2
Its main new features are yieldable pcall and metamethods, new lexical scheme for globals, ephemeron tables, new library for bitwise operations, light C functions, emergency garbage collector, goto statement, and finalizers for tables.
5.3
Its main new features are integers, bitwise operators, a basic utf-8 library, and support for both 64-bit and 32-bit platforms.
5.4
Work on Lua 5.4 has begun but there is no release date yet nor a roadmap.[ul][li]new generational mode for garbage collection[/li]
[li]userdata can have multiple user values[/li]
[li]debug information about function arguments and returns[/li]
[li]new implementation for math.random[/li][/ul]
I don’t believe that most casual users would care much about the 5.2 additions, or even know what they meant. 5.1 already has metamethods, coroutines, ephemeral tables, etc. It seems to me that it’s really rather few problems which actually need more than this.
In 5.3, integers are more of an internal thing, there are already bit libraries, [size=8pt]yahoo mail sign up[/size] but I would grant that utf-8 support might be desirable for systems development. However, just for home automation logic…?
I must admit that I am a huge fan of Lua. I have to thank Vera for introducing me to the language. I chose 5.1 as the implementation language for openLuup, simply to be compatible with Vera. Whilst I’m confident that I could upgrade to 5.2 and beyond (significant changes in function environments due to the lexical scheme for globals, would be the main task) the concept of Vera/MiOS doing so fills me with dread… ever had a problem with one of their firmware upgrades…?
This happens to be my 6000-th post, and I’m very happy that it turns out to be an opportunity to extol the virtues of Lua, whatever the version number you care to choose.[/quote]
Congrats on your 6K post count anniversary, akbooer!!!
Half of those posts are likely to be in response to all my novice Lua coding questions ;D
A significant milestone that?s for sure - thanks for your constant contribution @akbooer