Re: Suggestion: Replace Perl with Lua in the OpenBSD Base System

On 2019-12-30 18:07, ansimita@tutanota.com wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'd like to bring up the following suggestion:
>
> Would it be desirable for the OpenBSD project to replace Perl with Lua
> in the base system? A smaller base afforded to by Lua will reduce the
> attack surface and complexity of the OpenBSD project as a whole.
>
>   The source contains around 24000 lines of C. Under 64-bit Linux, the
>   Lua interpreter built with all standard Lua libraries takes 247K and
>   the Lua library takes 421K. - https://www.lua.org/about.html
>
>   Lua is free open-source software, distributed under a very liberal
>   license (the well-known MIT license).
>   - https://www.lua.org/about.html
>
> I recognize that this will involve a massive multi-year undertaking and
> I'd like to be part of the effort if it were to arise.
>
> Cheers,
> ansimita


I like lua as a whole, however it isn't extremely useful for system
administration tasks.

Which I believe is likely the reason for Perl's inclusion.


Edgar