Re: [Dev-luatex] Module searching

10 Dec 2007

      Heiko Oberdiek wrote:
...
Hello,
in the TeX world scripts are usually installed below TDS:scripts.
Lua does know a module system.
Example: There is a package "foobar" with module "foobar.hello".
Lua then searches in some standard places for
  foobar/hello.lua
However LuaTeX neglects the texmf trees. Thus "package.loaders"
could be extended by a kpse loader, e.g.:
function kpse.module_loader(module) 
    local file
    if string.find(module, ".", 1, true) then
      -- What to do?
      -- the following is just an unreliable emergency workaround:
      module = string.gsub(module, "^.*\%.", "")
      file = kpse.find_file(module .. ".lua", "texmfscripts")
    else
      file = kpse.find_file(module .. ".lua", "texmfscripts")
    end
    if file then
      local loader, error = loadfile(file)
      if loader then
        return loader
      end
      return "\n\t KPSE loading error:\n" .. error
    end
    return "\n\t KPSE search failed"
  end
  table.insert(package.loaders, kpse.module_loader)
However, the problem are modules with dots.
I haven't find a solution using kpse functions.
  kpsewhich --format=texmfscripts foobar/hello.lua
doesn't find the file.
well, maybe you could ask for the path variable, and loop over it

there's also luainputs
...
Perhaps a search path could be hacked by using the output of
  kpsewhich --show-path=texmfscripts
and appending the module directories to each path component.
But:
* LuaTeX's kpse library doesn't have a "show_path" function.
* os.execute is not available in safer mode.
* Last but not least, a kpse function is missing for
  searching along the modified path specification.
can't you use lua for that?
...
* Portability among different operating systems.
  (directory specificator, ..., LUA_DIRSEP isn't available, ...)
Ideas?
we explicitly didn't hard code these things because each user and/or 
macro package may want to do it different (the same for suffixes of lua 
files)
...
Something like "foobar_hello.lua" isn't the best solution:
* Redundancy in the full name:
  TDS:scripts/foobar/foobar_hello.lua
* It doesn't scale well, e.g. it pollutes "package.loaded".
Hans

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