Øyvind Harboe wrote:
> How about using Lua for highlevel parts of OpenOCD and
> implement low level fn's in C.

In the Ethernut Project we have a few years of experience with Lua as a 
script language for system configuration. The result is not impressive, 
which may be caused by

1. Simple, static implementation
2. Problems with the GUI, in which Lua is used
3. People refuse to learn another language just for a single project

The first problem one can be easily avoided by implementing full support 
from the beginning. My idea was to do a simple one first and wait for 
people catching fire and enhance it. This won't work for most Open 
Source Projects, as I should have known already.

The second problem wasn't Lua's fault, of course. But developers even 
tried to avoid the alternative command line version, which is based on 
Lua too and which works stable on Linux, Windows and OS X.

Number three is still a real problem. People flinch from modifying the 
scripts, although the simple implementation doesn't require any Lua 
knowledge at all.

In my technical view however, Lua did a great job. Beside all the 
features promoted on the official website, it is rock solid and the 
libraries can be build on any platform using any compiler without 
trouble (unfortunately no autotools). The Lua developers take great 
care, not to implement features which may cause platform or compiler 
dependencies.

At least, I'm still optimistic and happy to hear, that you are 
considering this language for OpenOCD. This would probably increase its 
acceptance among embedded developers. But be prepared, that people may 
keep asking you, why in the hell you are using a new language nobody is 
familiar with.

Harald

P.S. I should add, that the original source, on which the Ethernut 
configuration was based on, the eCos Configuration Tool, uses tcl. I 
replaced this by Lua simply because tcl looked a bit old and cryptic to 
me, while Lua seems to be more modern and clean.



_______________________________________________
Openocd-development mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/openocd-development

Reply via email to