Lua Chunks - Public Beta

[Nikolai Resokav]

Hello everyone. About a year ago I made a thread about a site I had created for sharing Lua code, luachunks.com. In that thread I was getting suggestions to add more advanced functionality to the site. These suggestions eventually convinced me to redo the site entirely earlier this year. Now, after months redesigning the site and implementing new functionality, I'm happy to announce that Lua Chunks is back with a new look, new features and is ready for public beta!

URL: http://luachunks.com/

About Lua Chunks
Lua Chunks is a website for sharing Lua code. It functions similarly to other code sharing websites, but is designed exclusively for Lua and the Lua community.

How Lua Chunks Works
When you post code to Lua Chunks, a new “chunk” is created. Before creating the chunk, you have a variety of chunk-related settings to choose from, such as what version of Lua the chunk was written for, what API it uses, and when it should expire. You can also specify what third-party libraries the chunk uses and whether or not you want to share it publicly. Chunks that are shared publicly are listed in the chunk archives, and are viewable by anyone who visits the site. The archives can also be searched and filtered by specific chunk properties and values.

Important Features

• Complex syntax highlighting: Lua Chunks supports syntax highlighting not only for vanilla Lua, but also for third-party APIs and libraries (such as LÖVE or Lua Socket).
• Live Lua Interpreter: When a user views a chunk, its code will be interpreted and the output will be displayed. Users can also have their code interpreted without posting a chunk by using the standalone interpreter.
• Searchable chunk archive: All public chunks are archived and searchable via the archives page.
• User Account System: Users can now create accounts to gain access to additional features and functionality. With an account, users can do things like:
  
  • Modify and delete their chunks
  • Create whitelists for their chunks
  • Comment on chunks
  • Enable or disable comments on their own chunks
  • Receive e-mail notifications when someone comments on one of their chunks
  • Endorse chunks
  • Change their public profile
  • Change the site’s theme
• .love Support: Chunks that use the LÖVE API can be downloaded as a .love. The chunk’s code will be put into main.lua and conf.lua will be automatically generated based on the chunk’s title and author.

Any and all feedback is welcomed and greatly appreciated, as there is still a lot of work to be done on the site. Also, if you like the site or find it useful, help spread the word to other Lua developers and communities! I'll be submitting the site to the Lua mailing list relatively soon, so hopefully that will help get the word out to the Lua community in general.

Also, I want to give a special thanks to Ensayia and Nixola for testing the site and providing feedback during the site's pre-beta stages.

[Ensayia]

Glad to see you finally release this publicly.

Also glad to see you took the project management idea and ran with it. It would be cool if we could edit files directly from the site, but I don't know how much work that would take. Hopefully the site sees a lot of traffic very soon.

[Nikolai Resokav]

Also glad to see you took the project management idea and ran with it. It would be cool if we could edit files directly from the site, but I don't know how much work that would take.

This is something I plan on experimenting with sometime in the future, though it is not my top priority at the moment. It would probably be a lot of work to get proper file editing for projects to work correctly, but its not impossible.

[ejmr]

At first glance I really like what I see. Great work

Sometime in the next week or so I'll try testing this out with by programming partner in game development and try to come up with any constructive criticism.

[Wojak]

This seams to be very usefull, I've especially like the online interpreter part Usually when I need to quickly check an algorithm o some kind I use this: http://www.lua.org/demo.html but I like the syntax highlighting in the luachunks one

Question, any plans on adding the Multi Theft Auto API?

[Lafolie]

I saw some infinite loops that had been posted, presumably for testing, how exactly are you handling those without the VM crashing? Just curious.

[Nikolai Resokav]

At first glance I really like what I see. Great work

Thanks, I'm glad you like it!

Sometime in the next week or so I'll try testing this out with by programming partner in game development and try to come up with any constructive criticism.

Awesome! I look forward to your feedback.

Question, any plans on adding the Multi Theft Auto API?

Absolutely! I plan on adding as many APIs and libraries that I can find.

I saw some infinite loops that had been posted, presumably for testing, how exactly are you handling those without the VM crashing? Just curious.

Chunk execution time is limited to 1 second via the ulimit command. The script that I'm using to process chunk ouputs is actually a slightly modified version of the one used on the demo page at lua.org.

[Ensayia]

It would be helpful if someone could edit a viewed chunk and repost it as a new chunk.

[Nikolai Resokav]

It would be helpful if someone could edit a viewed chunk and repost it as a new chunk.

Just finished implementing your suggestion. You can now copy and edit a chunk by clicking the "Copy & Edit" link in the editor toolbar.

[Wojak]

There is only 1 thing that annoys me – inability to change the edit box width...
It would be awesome if it at least adjusted itself to the browser width.

But everything else about this site is perfect (at least in my opinion), so thank You very much for making this, and keep up the good work