[OpenWrt-Devel] Squirrel instead of Lua?

Paul Sokolovsky pmiscml at gmail.com
Sat Jul 12 19:48:09 EDT 2014


Hello,

On Sat, 12 Jul 2014 23:13:37 +0200
"valent.turkovic at gmail.com" <valent.turkovic at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi devs,
> after listening to Amp Hour podcast ep 202 [1], interview With Brandon
> Harris from Electric Imp, which was impressive I heard something
> really alarming.
> 
> Whey were using Lua in their product previous to launch, but they were
> so strongly againgst shipping it with Lua because they realized that
> it would hold them down too much that they scrapped EVERYTHING one
> week before shipping and started looking for a better alternative.
> 
> They found Squirrel [2], so first question that popped into my mind
> was - is there Squirrel for OpenWrt. And from what I have seen so far
> there is not.
> 
> Has anybody used Squirrel? Would it make sense to look into it and
> would it be benificial to OpenWrt as a project to also switch from Lua
> to Squirrel?

Squirrel was on my radar for 3-4 years as unbloated scripting language.
A year ago, after failing to get a Stockholm syndrome for Lua's
ugliness, I started a project to make Squirrel a general purpose
scripting language (Squirrel on its own is "marketed" as embedded
language (as in "embedded in another application")):

https://github.com/pfalcon/squirrel-modules
http://forum.squirrel-lang.org/mainsite/forums/default.aspx?g=posts&t=3122

I found that there's lack of momentum and interest in making Squirrel
something more than it currently is. The maintainer in particular not
interested in making much, if at all, changes to the language, and
people who hack on the language core are fragmented in both space and
time.

> My sense is that it is not that critical because OpenWrt hardvare is
> so limited as one used by Electric Imp, but still it would be nice to
> have a more optimal language so that OpenWrt can ce used more in
> Internet Of Things arena...

Yes, definitely. But based on the above experience, as soon as I heard
about MicroPython project, I put on hold any Squirrel activity, instead
motivating MicroPython author to release it as OpenSource sooner rather
than latter, and since the code was released, I'm fervently hacking on
it instead. Python has active and wide community, and MicroPython is
pretty good technically. So, if you're interested in good, unbloated
high-level language, please consider looking at MicroPython - I now
posted an announcement in separate thread.

> 
> Cheers,
> Valent.
> 
> [1]
> http://www.theamphour.com/202-an-interview-with-brandon-harris-impish-internet-iamatology/
> [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squirrel_%28programming_language%29
> _______________________________________________ openwrt-devel mailing
> list openwrt-devel at lists.openwrt.org
> https://lists.openwrt.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-devel



-- 
Best regards,
 Paul                          mailto:pmiscml at gmail.com
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