Re: [ANN] Lunatik -- NetBSD kernel scripting with Lua (GSoC project results)

[Lourival Vieira Neto <lourival.neto%gmail.com@localhost>]

On Sun, Oct 10, 2010 at 10:45 PM, Samuel Greear <lua%evilcode.net@localhost> 
wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 3:24 PM, Lourival Vieira Neto
> <lourival.neto%gmail.com@localhost> wrote:
>> Hi folks,
>>
>> I'm glad to announce the results of my GSoC project this year [1].
>> We've created the support for scripting the NetBSD kernel with Lua,
>> which we called Lunatik and it is composed by a port of the Lua
>> interpreter to the kernel, a kernel programming interface for
>> extending subsystems and a user-space interface for loading user
>> scripts into the kernel. You can see more details on [2]. I am
>> currently working on the improvement of its implementation, on the
>> documentation and on the integration between Lunatik and other
>> subsystems, such as npf(9), to provide a real usage scenario.
>>
>> I'd like to take this space also to publicly thank Marc Balmer, for
>> his kind support; prof. Roberto Ierusalimschy, for his comprehension
>> and support; and NetBSD developers for their prompt help.
>>
>> [1] 
>> http://socghop.appspot.com/gsoc/student_project/show/google/gsoc2010/netbsd/t127230760748
>> [2] http://netbsd-soc.sourceforge.net/projects/luakern/
>>
>> Cheers,
>> --
>> Lourival Vieira Neto
>>
>>
>
> I eagerly waited to see the results of this project all summer, I did
> peruse the code as soon as you put it up on the google code hosting
> site.
>
> My brief notes (from memory):
>
> I didn't see any bindings, maybe there were some, but if I missed them
> there can't be very many, Lua in the kernel is fairly useless unless
> you can call into the public kernel api.
>
> I didn't like the fact that the only option for loading a script into
> the kernel was to load the script source. I would make loading
> pre-compiled scripts the preferential method. In fact, I would
> probably tear eval out of the kernel lua implementation and only
> support loading of precompiled byte-code into the kernel.
>
> I hope you continue working on this, I see potential and at some point
> I would like to evaluate this for inclusion in DragonFly BSD.
>
> Best,
> Sam
>

Folks,
The message above was sent both for tech-kern and Lua mailing lists
and we had valuable considerations about loading pre-compiled scripts
there. If want to keep track, here is the archive
[http://marc.info/?t=128631400200001&r=1&w=2].

Cheers,
--
Lourival Vieira Neto