taking-the-l/docs/README.md

Fennel Pong

Scaffolding a love2d project to use Fennel

• love2d: http://love2d.org/wiki/love

• fennel: https://github.com/bakpakin/Fennel

This was a learning exercise for me, and the end result is largely the result of me poking into other people's code. Almost nothing here is originally my own.

How To

• clone this repo
• download love2d
• add the love executable to your path and love . from the root directory

About Fennel

Pros:

• Get to write lisp for awesome lua frameworks like love2d and TIC-80

• Hot swapping / live reloading

  • 
  • Load changes to your code with a keypress without restarting your app
  • not unique to fennel. You can apparently use lume/hotswap to do this in pure Lua

• REPL driven development

  • 
  • embed fennel in your lua and start its REPL, and any global variables are available in your REPL to inspect and tweak while your code is running.

• Full Lua interop: call any and all lua functions, built in or from a library

Cons:

• No sourcemaps: can be hard to debug fennel when line numbers don't line up

How to use Fennel

Option 1: Embedded

This is what we're doing here. Put a few files in /lib:

• Fennel - the executable. you can lua lib/fennel --repl to run the repl. or anything else you can do with fennel

Then require fennel in your lua project.

Option 2: Install / Build

Meaning, install fennel, and use it to build lua files

1. Install luarocks: brew isntall luarocks

2. Install fennel: luarocks install fennel

You can for example run fennel --compile main.fnl > main.lua to turn Fennel into Lua.

Put this step in your Makefile or something to compile .fnl files into .lua files

Resources

Code and Blogs

• technomancy: wrote a couple of great games for Lisp Jam in Fennel and Love2d/TIC-80, all of which and more you can find in a series of blog posts starting here: https://technomancy.us/186

• selfsame: wrote Hats in the Deep, a game written for TIC-80 for a jam: https://selfsame.itch.io/hats

Framework

• min-love2d-fennel: the project structure used here. https://gitlab.com/alexjgriffith/min-love2d-fennel/tree/master

Editor support

• fennel vim: https://github.com/bakpakin/fennel.vim
• emacs fennel-mode: https://gitlab.com/technomancy/fennel-mode/

Community

Visit #fennel on freenode.net