Don't require end-users to add `--lua-version 5.5` to luarocks commands

[goldenstein64]

As mentioned in 8a178c8, it's bad UX to make an option required when installing an addon. If this can be avoided somehow, that would be ideal.

[goldenstein64]

A couple paths forward:

1. Ship a binary that wraps luarocks.

   #!/usr/bin/bash
   # ./lua_modules/bin/lls-addon
   echo "luarocks --lua-version 5.5 $@"
   luarocks --lua-version 5.5 "$@"

   @REM .\lua_modules\bin\lls-addon.bat
   luarocks --lua-version 5.5 %*

   We could reference a custom tree to make it even harder to get this wrong, although there would have to be extra logic to handle adding to user and system trees.

2. Require addon developers to add lua == 5.5 in their dependencies. Then end-users would see an error when they try to install an addon for the wrong version. Developers can forget to do this!

   -- lls-addon-my-type-0.1-1.rockspec
   
   -- ...
   
   dependencies = {
     "lua == 5.5",
   }

[goldenstein64]

We could also just do both, I think that's a good idea.

[goldenstein64]

"Shipping a binary" seems more complicated than I first thought. The cleanest way to do this would be to make it separate from this project, because installing the rock doesn't mean it gets installed to the same version as LuaRocks. If that happens, it would then do nothing in the tree except provide a binary, which doesn't sit right with me.

In the simplest case, this would also be such a simple change that the scripts could just be provided as code blocks in the README. I could do that right now.

[goldenstein64]

I added the temporary fix I just mentioned, a008572

I'm leaving this open since I want to find a better way to do this. I'm not sure if an alias setup is really ideal.

[goldenstein64]

I'm also much less likely to make a decision on this until I get some feedback. If anyone has an opinion on this, please share it here!

[carsakiller]

It seems that we could include our own CLI using build.install.bin. Perhaps we could include a custom Lua script that can provide the functionality that we need?

luarocks-build-addon/bin/lls-addons

#!/usr/bin/env lua

local foo = require("foo")

local args = { ... }

local command = args[1]

if command == "enable" then
  os.execute(string.format("luarocks --lua-version 5.5 install %s", args[2]))
end

[goldenstein64]

That would be the "shipping a binary" option I mentioned beforehand. Testing it out, it looks like it can be cross-platform, which relieves one of the pain points I thought we would have.

The problem I was having with deciding on this in the first place was that users would have to install luarocks-build-lls-addon before installing any of the addons, and I thought that, due to this project being used as a build dependency, it would need to be for the version of Lua that LuaRocks runs on because I thought lls-addons-loader.lua was compiled beforehand to assume a specific Lua version. Now I remember that it doesn't, it just queries the name of one of its ancestor directories at runtime. So, I might just move forward with your suggestion.

[goldenstein64]

@carsakiller let me know what you think of the current iteration. It just passes all arguments to luarocks --lua-version 5.5 like the scripts did. General usage is in the README.

Does it need to be more complicated than that? That's sort of what you were implying with your suggestion; I just don't know if that would be a good direction to take it, since it just wraps luarocks.

[carsakiller]

Sorry for the delay, @goldenstein64.

This is once again starting to tread into just making our own CLI app™ territory with requiring that this tool be installed before the addon, just to wrap LuaRocks. The beauty of the build backend (as I am sure you know) was that it would be installed with zero input from the end user - you install an addon, and the backend is automagically installed to continue installing the addon for you. Simple and clean 🧼.

Once we start having users run luarocks install luarocks-build-lls-addon and then they are given (useful!) commands like lls-addons install, lls-addons show... well, we're pretty much already there. Replace the above command with luarocks install lls-addons and boom, it's an end-user CLI tool rather than "hidden" build backend.

I'm curious what your thoughts are. We are sort of painted into a corner here with this --lua-version 5.5 flag, and I'm not sure a build backend is able to solve the problem adequately anymore, we are limited by what LuaRocks offers. Honestly, I worried we would run into a problem like this that would require a more custom CLI app rather than just building off of what LuaRocks has natively. On the bright side, it would offer us much more flexibility!