Python maybe often installed by default but it's definitely not an essential/required package "out of the box" on every install.
Also, in a thread where one topic is how POSIX shell handles whitespace in filenames, it's hilarious (not in a good way) that someone suggests a language that handles whitespace the wrong way in it's own code. Yes, significant whitespace is objectively wrong.
What OS/distro is Lua included on out of the box? That doesn't mean "available in a package". I mean literally included in every single install and cannot reasonably be omitted?
Regardless of the availability, the parent comment says
> better by every objectively measurable metric
Neither Python nor Lua are "better" than shell, at the types of things shell is commonly used for - they're objectively worse.
Lua gets onto every other Linux distro as dependency of some base system component. For example, rpm or pipewire depend on lua. Ubuntu and Debian ship with pipewire per default.
That isn't even close to "installed on every system". Best I can tell from the reverse dependencies, it's required for some Gnome Remote Desktop tool, and best I can tell, it doesn't rely on Lua anyway (at least on Debian).
> You should use the word "objectively" less.
I specifically used the word objectively, because the original comment that I replied to, said this:
> Pipewire being the Pulseaudio replacement from Redhat.
Right, so it's a desktop package that ultimately will be installed on about 1% of all Linux machines because the vast majority are servers without a desktop environment.
Also worth pointing out: liblua on Debian at least, is the shared library. It's not the binary to execute standalone Lua scripts.
This this like a game where you come up with bullshit and i have to come up with the facts to rectify it? RHEL/centOS have more than 1% market share alone.
Check your own installs and tell me if you find some that dont have liblua or libluajit.
For the library thing: I said "Python and lua are pretty close to that." earlier. I did not say that they have interpreters ready everywhere. But if the language core is already installed on a large fraction of machines, then adding the interpreter is not a big cost.
> already installed on a large fraction of machines
So far you've presented no evidence of this though, just that it's used by a new desktop-focused package.
All linux desktops over the last 30 years is not even a "large fraction" of total Linux installs, much less the ones that have already migrated to this new audio system.
> adding the interpreter is not a big cost
It's nothing to do with cost. It's about "how do I know this will absolutely 100% run on any POSIX machine I throw it on without any extra steps".
Remember the argument here is about something that is claimed to be "objectively better" than Shell. The ubiquitous nature of POSIX shell is a huge barrier for any possible competitor, and saying "well you just need to install it" just defeats the purpose. You might as well write it in fucking java and say "well you just need to install a JVM".
Edit to Add:
a good number of systems I manage do have liblua installed... because HAProxy requires it, and those systems have HAProxy installed. Not because it was installed as part of the base OS or even a default group of packages.
Incidentally, HAProxy and thus liblua were installed on those systems by infrastructure management that's implemented as shell script. So what kind of chicken and egg argument do we need to have here about how exactly I can run a Lua script to install Lua?
Python maybe often installed by default but it's definitely not an essential/required package "out of the box" on every install. Also, in a thread where one topic is how POSIX shell handles whitespace in filenames, it's hilarious (not in a good way) that someone suggests a language that handles whitespace the wrong way in it's own code. Yes, significant whitespace is objectively wrong.
What OS/distro is Lua included on out of the box? That doesn't mean "available in a package". I mean literally included in every single install and cannot reasonably be omitted?
Regardless of the availability, the parent comment says
> better by every objectively measurable metric
Neither Python nor Lua are "better" than shell, at the types of things shell is commonly used for - they're objectively worse.