Lua is such a great language for this . I don't know why I haven't tried this yet. Having lost faith in Python for my personal pet home automation projects I want to complete this winter. I think I just found my language for doing some ideas I want to try at home.

I love Lua just as much as everyone else but I don't understand the need for eLua.

Lua was already designed for embedded use.

After reading the overview of eLua, I don't understand what it brings that standard Lua doesn't already provide.

http://www.eluaproject.net/overview

Anyone care to elaborate.

Edit: OT. Does anyone know what Mike Pall is working on since it's not LuaJit these days? http://luajit.org/sponsors.html

You can think of it as an embedded distribution that's ready to run on a lot of microcontroller platforms:

http://wiki.eluaproject.net/Boards

True, you can port standard lua, but you would still need to do some low level work such as setting up the serial ports and timers.

In this context, they mean embedded devices (typically running machine code on non-x86 architecture CPUs: ARM, AVR, etc).

They are either providing means to compile Lua code to machine code (or an interpreter/VM running on controller and executing Lua code). Also, they have unified hardware abstraction layer for all the different architectures and controlls supported, so that operating peripherals feels the same on all platforms.

>> "In this context, they mean embedded devices (typically running machine code on non-x86 architecture CPUs: ARM, AVR, etc)."

Sorry, but I'm still not understanding the value.

I'll paste an excerpt from Lua official website:

"Lua is implemented in pure ANSI C and compiles unmodified in all known platforms. All you need to build Lua is an ANSI C compiler (gcc is a popular one). Lua also compiles cleanly as C++."[1]

Even LuaJIT has non-x86 support [2].

[1] http://www.lua.org/faq.html#1.1

[2] http://luajit.org/performance.html

edit: typo

Basically eLua gives you some extra low memory support plus a build system and drivers for microcontrollers that have a standard interface.

No idea on Mike Pall, he has not given any visible clues.

if only there was a high quality set of 'standard' libraries for Lua. And maybe some portable multithreading.