Lua Corovel

An event-loop programming environment for Lua that mimics the one in Corona SDK.

Features

Though it's in its infancy, Corovel is pretty cool. It will allow you to:

• Run unmodified, non-visual code from Corona SDK on a server

• create and run other Corvel environments in separate threads

  Combined with Lua Lanes, each environment can run in its own OS thread ! sweet

Overview

Corovel Environment

Corovel provides some core environment objects from the Corona SDK so that non-visual code will run unmodified.

Threaded Corovels

Here the Main Corovel launches and controls multiple Corovel instances, each running in separate threads via LuaLanes. Depending on needs, each process can be short-lived (eg, Web Worker) or loop forever (eg, server process).

Each sub-Corovel can launch its own threaded Corovels, too !

Dependencies

Corovel is a library written in pure Lua. It requires the following Lua modules:

• Lua 5.1 (5.2 should work too, though not tested)
• LuaSocket

Optional installs:

• Lua Lanes

How to Use Corovel

Launch your Lua file with Corovel like so:

• lua corovel.lua main This launches ./main.lua inside of the main Corovel

• lua corovel.lua commands.master This launches the file ./commands/master.lua inside of the main Corovel

Why Corovel ?

The name Corovel comes from the phrase Corona Event Loop. I created it so that I could run certain modules from my DMC Corona Library in a server environment (eg, async TCP Sockets, WebSockets, and WAMP). I figured if I could create an enviroment similar to the Corona SDK, then I wouldn't have to re-write any of the libraries and could continue to code in my "normal" Corona-esque manner. =)

Async programming is easy if you have the right building blocks for async code. The Corona SDK environment provides two core objects: the Corona Runtime and Corona Timer. The event loop powers both the Runtime which sends out events every "frame" and the Timer which will call a handler after a certain time has passed.

Note that Corovel is NOT the Corona SDK ! Corovel does not provide any visual services to code – eg, sprites, game-engine, etc.

Corona Modules

These objects from the Corona world are available, but might not be complete:

• Runtime
• timer
• system
• network

These shims are available for Lua modules:

• json

Tests

There are two types of test frameworks used – Busted and Lunatest.

Lunatest tests run inside of a running Corovel. The script run.sh is setup for those. Type the following to run:

> ./run.sh

Bested tests run outside of Corovel and test basic units. Type the following to run:

> busted

Documentation & Examples

More docs coming soon. http://docs.davidmccuskey.com/display/docs/Lua+Corovel

Examples are in the examples folder.