Lua scripting - ETA ?

[Makay Scribe]

I was reading through the links from the other thread and couldnt catch a timeline.  Can I start using Lua now, soon , 4yrs?

[Love Zhaoying]

35 minutes ago, Makay Scribe said:

Can I start using Lua now, soon , 4yrs?

Yes.

[Rolig Loon]

It's anyone's guess.

[Mr Amore]

I'm speculating we'll have betagrid access by the end of this year.

[Love Zhaoying]

Thought I read that we may have "cross-compiling" (LSL compiled into Lua byte code) before the ability to actually "write code in Lua"? That could have been an assumption on my part.

[Quistess Alpha]

2 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Thought I read that we may have "cross-compiling" (LSL compiled into Lua byte code) before the ability to actually "write code in Lua"? That could have been an assumption on my part.

That was my understanding. They are or will be soon "silently" compiling scripts to both mono (what we use now) and lua bytecode, running them both simultaneously, and checking that the results are the same. Speculating that they're doing that right now, but not always getting the same answer, that's a lot of development time to fix that, which won't have any visible results until they do.

[Kristy Aurelia]

On 8/31/2024 at 12:59 PM, Love Zhaoying said:

Thought I read that we may have "cross-compiling" (LSL compiled into Lua byte code) before the ability to actually "write code in Lua"? That could have been an assumption on my part.

The FAQ is here https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Lua_FAQ

But to summarise what's been said during SUG meetings, Luau will roll out in 3 stages:

1. Compile LSL to Luau Bytecode and run in parallel/shadow mode next to LSL scripts (Unconfirmed, but I think this will be on Beta Grid or Specific Test Sims) to verify that the behaviour between the two is identical.
2. Change LSL to run on Luau VM instead of Mono VM, will require script to be recompiled. This should result in speed and memory improvements. All new scripts should just run on Luau VM (There have been some suggestions in regards of swapping old, running scripts to Luau, but preserving state is tricky)
3. Add native Luau support, to allow scripting either in LSL or Luau, while both still compile and run on the same Luau VM. New llFunctions will be added to both LSL and Luau as they are the same C++ functions in the sim code anyway. Luau specific language features will not be ported to LSL.