[coneonthefloor]

The syntax proposals look fine. But I don’t feel they are needed. Lua is easy to write and grok. I default to using LuaJIT, and have never had an issue with the actual code. Integration with the Lua ecosystem is the problem. Fix the compatibility issues with LuaRocks packages and PucRio. That would be the best dev ex update in my opinion.

[revengerwizard]

Compatibility with PUC Lua versions after 5.1 is especially hard, given that more or less arbitrary syntactic and semantic but also C API changes have been introduced in every version since then.

That is mostly the reason why LuaJIT is stuck with a mix of 5.1 and toggled 5.2 features.