Acquis 0

Acquis 0 is not an actual acquis, but rather the initial state of the language at the moment of its fork from Lua 5.5 RC 2. Since this isn’t an acquis, this page serves as an explanation of what an acquis is.

Acquis are the accumulated changes and additions to the language. They are formally defined in advance and implemented incrementally, with dependency acquis implemented first so that other acquis can build upon them. Evolving the language through acquis allows for a delineated, documentable progression of the language across time. For those familiar with the term, acquis are functionally similar to RFCs, but there aren’t any actual requests for comments and it is more of a means of documenting and studying future changes to the language.

Not all changes necessarily go through an acquis. Bugfixes, test cases, and minor changes are often implemented directly. An acquis is mostly useful when drafting technically complex additions to the language that requires careful advance study, especially as it relates to preserving the minimalism of the language’s semantics or increasing the size of the runtime. Generally, when something requires the integration of an external library, an acquis is necessary.