Linception is a Lua library for creating Lua states inside other Lua states. This is useful in general for writing applications in Lua that deal with Lua code, and need a more advanced view into the code they are running or stronger sandboxing guarantees. It's also useful for myself, as an opportunity to practice my C skills and learn the Lua API.
This differs from Rings by
providing more of the Lua API than just dostring, and providing stronger
isolation in the upward direction (i.e. the child doesn't have an arbitrary
remotedostring function).
The API is still taking shape, but eventually I imagine it looking like:
local linception = require 'linception'
local state = linception.newstate()
state.globals.hello = state:proxy(function ()
print "Hello, from the parent state!"
end)
state:call(state:global "hello")
I'm still deciding how much of the stack-based nature of the Lua API I want to expose.
When you create a state using Linception, the newly created state is
referred to as the child state, and the state that created it, the parent
state. (In the C source, functions intended to be called from a parent
use L as the name of the lua_State, and functions intended to be called
from a child use Lc.)
Each state can have multiple children, but only one parent. Communication from a parent to its child is referred to as downward, and communication from a child to its parent is referred to as upward. Parents can only communicate with their direct children, however, if the child state has Linception installed, the parent can use the Lua API to manipulate the state handles inside the child, and thus communicate indirectly.