Currently supported languages
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The first column is the language (in alphabetic order), the second column
is the GPMI module you need to load.

Language        Module name     Working     Instance         Memory      version
                                            Safe (2)         leak (1)

awk (5)         mawk            yes         yes                todo        0.9.1
bash            cli             yes         yes                no          *
lua             lua             yes         yes                no          5.1, 5.2
scheme          guile           yes         yes                650k        1.8
stutter (4)     stutter         yes         yes                3k          todo
pascal          ghli            yes         ??                 ??          todo
perl            perl            yes         with ithreads (3)  120k        5.*
php             php             no? (6)     no                 ??          todo
python          python          yes         no                 800k        2.5
ruby            ruby            yes         no                 670k        1.8 (7)
ruby            mruby           yes         yes                200 bytes   1.0.0
tcl             tcl             yes         yes                210k        8.4


(1) We estimated the bytes of memory that is leaking by using example-scripts
      with the given language together with valgrind. GPMI itself is not
      leaking, we can estabilsh that by trying lua (which is very well
      programmed, memory-wise) and the cli module which runs the actual
      script in a separate process. Of course the memory it is 'leaking' most
      of the time is just memory that isn't free'd after we requested a
      destroy. Still we consider this as a bad thing, although the memory is
      automaticly freed by the system after the program shuts down. So those
      numbers are just indications how good a language is in cleaning up after
      itself.

(2) If a language is instance safe, we mean we can launch multiple instances
      of the same language at the same time, without messing around with the
      other instances. For example, I can have 2 variables 'foo' in both
      instances, with different values. They never know of eachother that the
      other is running.
    If it is known a language doesn't support it, we protected the code against
      multiple instances being active at the same time.

(3) You can compile Perl with or without ithreads. When you do it without
      ithreads, perl isn't instance safe. When you do it with ithreads, it is
      no problem at all.

(4) A lisp dialect.

(5) since libmawk is licensed under the GPL, using this module may affect
    licensing of the host application's.

(6) php doesn't really support embedding the way GPMI requires. The module
    is there, should work, but not tested for some time.

(7) there were API changes in 1.9 and the dispatcher C function (dynamic
    commands) wouldn't port. It's probably better to use mruby, which
    is instance-safe as well.