The document discusses Lua, a lightweight scripting language embedded in C/C++ applications. It provides an overview of Lua's uses in games, mobile apps, and embedded systems. The Lua Development Tools (LDT) plugin for Eclipse is presented as a way to provide IDE support for Lua in a manner consistent with its embeddable nature. Future plans for LDT include improved content assistance, support for multiple execution environments, and pre-bundled interpreters.

1. Lua
Steroids
on
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2. What is
Lua
all about
Copyright © 2012 Sierra Wireless. All Right reserved. Made available under the Eclipse Public License v1.0.

3. http://www.lua.org/about.html
“Lua is a powerful, fast,
lightweight, embeddable
scripting language.”
Copyright © 2012 Sierra Wireless. All Right reserved. Made available under the Eclipse Public License v1.0.

4. Rationale
Extending C/C++ applications with a
configuration / scripting engine
Copyright © 2012 Sierra Wireless. All Right reserved. Made available under the Eclipse Public License v1.0.

5. Rationale
Extending C/C++ applications with a
configuration / scripting engine
 Based on a virtual machine
 Can load source code / read char streams
 And compile it into portable bytecode
Copyright © 2012 Sierra Wireless. All Right reserved. Made available under the Eclipse Public License v1.0.

6. Rationale
Extending C/C++ applications with a
configuration / scripting engine
 Tiny core (150kB)
 Pure ANSI C
 Simple C API
Copyright © 2012 Sierra Wireless. All Right reserved. Made available under the Eclipse Public License v1.0.

7. Rationale
Extending C/C++ applications with a
configuration / scripting engine
 DSL building kit
 Provides only basic features
 And a powerful runtime
Copyright © 2012 Sierra Wireless. All Right reserved. Made available under the Eclipse Public License v1.0.

8. A language gaining momentum
 Video games  App scripting
 World of Warcraft  Adobe Lightroom
 Havoc physics  Redis (key-value
engine store)
 AI scripting
 Mobile  Embedded
 Corona SDK  Brew MP
 Moai (Qualcomm)
 LÖVE  eLua (Petrobras)
 AAF (Sierra Wireless)
Copyright © 2012 Sierra Wireless. All Right reserved. Made available under the Eclipse Public License v1.0.

9. What
is
missing
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10. IDE
support
Copyright © 2012 Sierra Wireless. All Right reserved. Made available under the Eclipse Public License v1.0.

11. http://www.eclipse.org/koneki/ldt/
Copyright © 2012 Sierra Wireless. All Right reserved. Made available under the Eclipse Public License v1.0.

12. Rationale
A tool that follows Lua’s philosophy
Providing lots of modern features while
remaining easily embeddable in larger
systems.
Copyright © 2012 Sierra Wireless. All Right reserved. Made available under the Eclipse Public License v1.0.

13. However…
Lua strengths
 Dynamic
 Embeddable
are double-edged swords
that make tooling support tedious.
Copyright © 2012 Sierra Wireless. All Right reserved. Made available under the Eclipse Public License v1.0.

14. Editor
VS.
Dynamic
code
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15. Debugger
VS.
Embedded
application
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16. LDT
for m2m development
Copyright © 2012 Sierra Wireless. All Right reserved. Made available under the Eclipse Public License v1.0.

17. m2m.eclipse.org MQTT broker
Wireless gateway Mobile phone
Wireless (Zigbee) sensors
Copyright © 2012 Sierra Wireless. All Right reserved. Made available under the Eclipse Public License v1.0.

18. Two Lua applications
 Embedded  Mobile
Aleos Application Corona
Framework SDK .
Collects Zigbee data on Subscribes to MQTT
device’s serial port messages
Publishes MQTT messages Displays sensor data with
a fancy UI
Copyright © 2012 Sierra Wireless. All Right reserved. Made available under the Eclipse Public License v1.0.

19. What’s
Next
Copyright © 2012 Sierra Wireless. All Right reserved. Made available under the Eclipse Public License v1.0.

20. LDT Roadmap
LDT 0.8 will be in Juno
Content-assist (pending CQ)
 Beta product here: http://goo.gl/NZgCc
Execution environments
Next…
 Launch configurations (w/ embedded interpreter)
 Pre-bundled execution environments
Copyright © 2012 Sierra Wireless. All Right reserved. Made available under the Eclipse Public License v1.0.

21. Big thanks to
Eclipse
 RSE http://www.eclipse.org/tm/
 DLTK http://www.eclipse.org/dltk/
Lua
 JNLua http://code.google.com/p/jnlua/
 MetaLua http://metalua.luaforge.net/
 LDoc http://github.com/stevedonovan/LDoc
Copyright © 2012 Sierra Wireless. All Right reserved. Made available under the Eclipse Public License v1.0.

22. Useful links
Lua
 Main site http://lua.org
 Kepler project http://www.keplerproject.org/
LDT
 Koneki http://www.eclipse.org/koneki/
 Installation http://download.eclipse.org/koneki/updates
 Wiki http://wiki.eclipse.org/Koneki
 Forum http://www.eclipse.org/forums/eclipse.koneki
Copyright © 2012 Sierra Wireless. All Right reserved. Made available under the Eclipse Public License v1.0.

23. Copyright © 2012 Sierra Wireless. All Right reserved. Made available under the Eclipse Public License v1.0.