
Lua 5.4.0 (work1) is now available - catwell
This is the first pre-release for the next version of Lua.<p>The email announcement from Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo is not yet in the archive, so I reproduce it here:<p>Lua 5.4.0 (work1) is now available for testing at
        http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lua.org&#x2F;work&#x2F;lua-5.4.0-work1.tar.gz<p>The checksums are
        MD5     0ff232b8658884155a43cf72212edbd9  -
        SHA1    a8193b14ed3869917d1102cb0418cf9dfb0d9baf  -<p>This is a work version. All details may change in the final version.<p>An updated reference manual is included and also available at
        http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lua.org&#x2F;work&#x2F;doc<p>The complete diffs from Lua 5.3 are too extensive to show.<p>A test suite is available at
        http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lua.org&#x2F;work&#x2F;lua-5.4.0-work1-tests.tar.gz<p>All feedback welcome. Thanks.
--lhf
======
ioddly
From the manual:
[http://www.lua.org/work/doc/#changes](http://www.lua.org/work/doc/#changes)

> new generational mode for garbage collection

(!)

> userdata can have multiple user values

> debug information about function arguments and returns

> new implementation for math.random

~~~
alricb
> new implementation for math.random

It's Xorshift128+, instead of random() or rand().

------
andrewmcwatters
From observing what has happened to Lua 5.1.5, LuaJIT, Lua 5.x.x>5.1.5, Python
2, and Python 3, it appears to me (with my limited experience in software
development) that languages grow to mature to a peak where they provide their
most value and productivity into languages which don't stop growing. These
languages eventually prune productivity gains due to API breakage and library
severance across major versions, to the point where their ecosystems become
disparate.

I'm not sure I see the benefits of using anything beyond Lua 5.1.5/LuaJIT
these days in game development. I'm not sure what the status of version
adoption is beyond this particular field, but I contribute and participate in
open source Lua-based game development projects to such an extent that I see
the same names over and over again and have these people on my friends lists
across different platforms.

A lot of these folks are all also still using LuaJIT, which has kept much of
the community from moving forward, because if you're _not_ using it, you're
missing out on some significant performance gains which are very relevant in
gamedev.

~~~
sitkack
LuaJIT is indeed a big draw, but it also has a bunch of 5.2 features, esp
goto. 5.3 brought integers which is awesome because 64 bit datatypes can round
trip through Lua will full fidelity.

