cgit-lua: to jit or not to jit

[Jason at zx2c4.com (Jason A. Donenfeld)]

On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 3:37 AM, Andrew Starks <andrew.starks at trms.com> wrote:
>
> I don't have LuaJit installed and would not install it (and migrate
> everything I do over to it) just to use a library. By way of example, your
> library may as well have been written for Python, for as much good as it
> would be to me.
>
> By contrast, if you stick to the subset of 5.2 that 5.1 supports, and / or
> use a bit of the luacomp library, then anyone with lua 5.1, luajit or Lua
> 5.2 can use it.
>
> The question, from a user's perspective is: what benefit are you giving me,
> in exchange for locking me into luajit, as a dependency?
>
> Even if I am using Luajit, that doesn't mean that I don't need to support
> the current, mainline distribution and straight 5.1. So, I can't use your
> library as a dependency, if this were the case.
>
> It's easier for you if you like what the FFI gives you. Supporting the
> common subset and using luacompat, as necessary, is the simplest, for the
> user.
>
> IMHO, of course

That's a fairly compelling opinion. The only thing against it is the
temptation of using FFI in the default scripts that we ship with cgit.
But I suppose for the sake of giving users choice later on, it might
be best, as you've said, to continue to support both, and let the user
choose.