ZZ NIL with pre compiled scripts - jpbubble/NIL-isn-t-Lua GitHub Wiki

I have NEVER used pre-compiled scripts in serious projects myself. Main reason... It was a downright disaster! I guess it goes without saying that I therefore cannot tell how well NIL will work with Lua pre-compilers.

Oh, and here are my answers if you try to get me into pre-compiling anyway

• Pre-compiling is faster

  • Only during loading, and Lua compiles very fast. In run-time there is no difference as Lua cannot run non-compiled scripts.
  • NIL hardly made a difference for me either so far (at least not noticeable to a human being).

• Pre-compiled scripts cannot be seen by other people

  • Like I care. Nearly all my work is open-source anyway, so you can see all my source on GitHub.
  • Unlike machine language, compiled code made in scripting languages are mostly very very easy to de-compile, so it wouldn't make a difference anyway.

• Pre-compiled scripts take up less space

  • Depends on how much code was in the source code. Like many compilers smaller stuff often becomes bigger, and bigger stuff becomes smaller. In Scripting small scripts are not uncommon.
  • My scripts are all packed with lzma in most of my projects, nullifying that reasoning also.

Also, when I just keep in in source code, it's easier for me to check if no file-corruptions took place in my distributions.

Now I never tried this, but I think the best way to go to pre-compile NIL scripts is to make a quick Lua-script translating the NIL script (with NIL.Translate) and write that code as a temp file (making sure you add "NIL=require "NIL"" at the top of it) and then run your Lua compiler. Although I never tried this, and I also cannot tell how "#use" statements will work although it's my guess they will still want the files they import in pure NIL or Lua (seems most obvious to me).

Since me and Lua pre-compilers were never good friends, perhaps a NIL pre-compiler is not the project I want to undertake, but it should certainly be possible.