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NetBSD To Support Kernel Development In Lua Scripting

Posted by timothy on from the point-of-entry dept.

An anonymous reader writes "NetBSD 7.0 will support the Lua scripting language within its kernel for developing drivers and new sub-systems. A Lua scripting interpreter is being added to the NetBSD kernel along with a kernel API so developers can use this scripting language rather than C for developing new BSD kernel components. Expressed reasons for supporting a scripting language in a kernel were rapid application development, better configuration, and "modifying software written in C is hard for users." In a presentation it was said that Lua in the kernel will let users explore their system in an easy way."

2 of 311 comments (clear)

  1. users? by gTsiros · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "modifying software written in C is hard for users."

    i thought *users* had no business writing device drivers?

    of course if they had said "modifying software written in C is hard for programmers." it would gather a fierce shitstorm.

    --
    Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
    1. Re:users? by MacTO · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Keep in mind that NetBSD users are quite different from Windows/Macintosh/Linux users (at least on average).

      "Hard" may also be a reference to the implementation, rather than the language. Interpreted languages tend to bypass the compile and link part of the development process. This means that interpreted languages are easier to develop with and compiled languages are hard to develop with (at least in some respects). I'd also comment on the arcane nature of C, but I haven't used lua so I don't know if it is any better.