Re: Small embeddable scripting language ?

[Biswapesh Chattopadhyay <biswapesh_chatterjee tcscal co in>]

On Fri, 2002-11-29 at 17:42, Michael Meeks wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi Biswapesh,
> 
> On Thu, 2002-11-28 at 04:07, Biswapesh Chattopadhyay wrote:
> > 1) Small (since we'll probably have to distribute it with Anjuta)
> > 2) Reasonably fast
> > 3) Embeddable from C programs
> > 4) Ability to register/call C functions
> > 5) Free
> 
>  Mono ! or python ;-) Mono has the advantage of giving you a feel good
> factor, of using a kick-ass fast jit, having several (full time ximian)
> people to hold your hand, and having lots of really nice features that
> would make it's integration as standard in an IDE nice.

Ooh - here comes another contender. I didn't know Mono could be embedded
in C programs ? The problem is that I don't want users to 'compile'
their scripts - they should just type-n-run.

> 
>  OTOH, python is - I understand, far more friendly than guile / perl for
> embedding in programs, and it's out there on most of the machines you're
> interested in.

It's also more easily embeddable, I guess, since there are good
embedding docs and lots of poeple seem to be doing it.

> 
>  If I were doing it, I'd choose Mono, to help promote it because I think
> it's significantly better than sliced bread. Also, I'm extremely
> under-convinced by the "Must not include any new dependencies" type
> argument ( which I see you wisely don't make :-).
> 

It's not that I don't want to introduce new dependencies. But I don't
want to add *unnecessary* dependencies. There is quite a high
probability that most people installing Anjuta won't have Mono
installed. OTOH, most poeple *definitely* will have Python installed.
There is no point inflicting unnecessary pain on users through adding
dependencies that can be avoided by choosing sensible defaults. Here in
India, bandwidth is costly and not easily available - with 99% of the
internet-enabled on 33K dialup connections. Not a good idea to force
them to download something not available by default with all distros.
Downloading Anjuta is difficult enough for them (which is why I split
the RPMs into sensible chunks in the first place)

Having said that, it would be interesting to see how Mono performs as an
embeddable language. Might give it a go for Anjuta2 I guess :-)

Rgds,
Biswa.

>  HTH,
> 
>   Michael.
> 
> --
>  mmeeks gnu org  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot
> 
>