Kite wishlist
Written by Mooneer Salem on Thursday 1st of January, 2009 in General
Now that 1.0.0's out, I feel it's time to reflect on the future of Kite.
At this point, the interpreter is stable. All unit tests pass, and what should pass as valid syntax does. Stuff runs, including an IRC bot written in Kite hanging out in #kite on Freenode (thanks, Rowan/thewolf!) However, there are definitely some add-on modules that would be nice to have:
- A database connection layer: This would be a layer, similar to Perl's DBI, that allows a Kite application access to a SQL database. There's already a layer for C apps called libdbi, and a layer for Kite could simply be a loadable module with libdbi linked in.
- XML/DOM parser: With the advent of RSS and other technologies that use XML, this would be nice to have. It should be possible to write this module 100% in Kite, or for performance, use libxml or similar.
- Module installer system: Something like Perl's CPAN or rubygems to install Kite modules automatically. Maybe something that avoids the pitfalls of the systems already out there. This may also include some sort of module that acts similar to autoconf for Kite modules.
- FastCGI/Apache modules: Embed Kite into Apache, like mod_perl and mod_php. There is support for regular CGI, but an embedded interpreter would be best.
- POP3/IMAP/SMTP/FTP/HTTPS/SSL modules: Include support in the interface namespace for protocols other than HTTP.
- Multiple inheritance: This is not kosher OO normally, but there are uses for such a feature. There should be a way to code it as a dynamic module without needing to change language syntax.
What else would you like to see in Kite? Discuss it on the Kite mailing list. You can also download the latest version or look at the Subversion tree, if you'd like to play around. (This documentation may also help, if you'd like to extend Kite.)