Revision as of 12:49, 22 April 2013

New & Noteworthy 1.0

Here are the new features available in Lua Development Tools 1.0 M1, released on April 19^th, 2013.
Keep in mind that this version in still under development and can be unstable. Anyway, this version is available from the Koneki p2 repository at http://download.eclipse.org/koneki/releases/milestones.

Support of Lua 5.2

LDT now provides a Lua 5.2 user experience directly shipped with the product. Which means LDT provide out of the box:

• Embedded Lua 5.2 Execution Environment which provide great user-assistance (content-assist, documentation,...)
• Lua 5.2 Debugger
• Built-in Lua 5.2 interpreter based on JNLua which enable running and debugging applications out of the box.

Note: The debugger need LuaSocket version 2.1.x to work on top of Lua 5.2, see the vm compatibility page.

Support of LuaJIT debug

LDT debugger is now compatible LuaJIT 2.0.x interpreter. LuaJIT is a Just-In-Time Compiler(JIT) for the Lua programming language.

Note: The debugger need LuaSocket version 2.1.x to work on top of LuaJIT, see the vm compatibility page.

Enhanced support of non-standard interpreters

It's now possible to define an interpreter which doesn't handle the -e option, right from interpreter preferences page.

This option enables to execute a piece Lua before runtime. It was used by Koneki LDT to start all debugging sessions. Now it is possible to bootstrap a debug session without it, it makes Koneki LDT compatible with more kinds of interpreters, but be aware that in this case the user is responsible for launching the debugger by adding the following code as first statement of its application:

if os.getenv('DEBUG_MODE') then require "debugger"() end

Note: The DEBUG_MODE environment variable is set only for debug, to avoid to start the debugger for a regular run.

Better user-assistance

It's now possible to type and set a description for a local or global variable by adding a comment before or after its declaration. LDT consider a global variable declaration when the first occurrence of a global variable in a file is an affectation. Typing a variable allow to have auto-completion on it and explicit your code.

If function parameters are documented and associated with a type using the Lua Documentation Language, they will be available for auto-completion in the function body.

If a Lua Documentation Language tag such as @type or @module is directly followed by a variable declaration, the declared type or module type is associated to the variable.

Now global variables and functions are handled in current file. And yes, they are available for user assistance.

Note: this feature is obviously also available for local functions and variables.

Enhanced outline

The outline now contains new items such as global variables and functions. Also the type of outline elements is displayed if any.

Integration of lastest Metalua version

Metalua is the key component that analyze the Lua code. Koneki LDT now uses the last version of Metalua which the enhance syntax error handling and fix some bugs.