Andreas,
first of all sorry I didn't reply to your email yesterday but I have a problem with my SMTP server's SSL certificate and I can't send *any* mail. I hope I 'll resolve this soon so that I can send you my changes too.
As for your questions in this topic:
Thomas has given you a good overview (and history) of the situation. I 'll just add a few more things.
This is the third time that I rewrite the script bindings.
The first time I bound everything using normal AngelScript code (i.e. *not* in AS_MAX_PORTABILITY mode).
Second time was about a month ago when I rewrote all bindings in AS_MAX_PORTABILITY mode, i.e. writing proxy functions for *every* single SDK function, with the hope that AngelScript would work in this mode. The conversion was futile and I never published (i.e. commited in SVN) this change. I still have it on my disk though (or so I believe
).
Now it's the third time, this time using a different scripting library. This finally went well and I can access the scripted functionality of C::B in my Ubuntu64. What a joy
What you, and everyone else interested, must understand firmly is that scripting is part of the core SDK. This SDK is a very sensitive part of C::B in the sense that it must not change often and if it does it shouldn't break compatibility with earlier versions. This is especially true once we put 1.0 final out. We won't be able to do any more drastic changes like this, not until 2.0 anyway.
For this reason it's a really tough decision.
On one hand, we (at least me and Thomas
) really like AS. That's why we "forced" using it in the first place. It's worth noting that it's the only library used in C::B which didn't meet our multi-platform requirements and still it made it into our code.
On the other hand, we now have a fully working solution (and with easy binding too, thanks to SqPlus). And the language has very nice features too.
I think I 've explained most aspects of the issue at hand.
A final decision hasn't been made yet, so I can't rule anything out. We 're currently testing Squirrel in a different branch and everything goes smooth for the time being.
In the end, we 'll reach a final decision. All devs that have knowledge about scripting.
In the meantime, I 'd be happy to test AS in AS_MAX_PORTABILITY mode this weekend, if you manage to get it working (and assuming I really still have the binding files I had written - I 'm not doing it again if I 've lost them
.