[tex-live] perl or lua standard library modules in texlive

[Michael Palmer]

Hi,

I've got a technical question concerning executable scripts in TeXLive  
packages.

I have uploaded a Python program (mol2chemfig) as a package to CTAN.  
This program converts chemical structures in molfile or SMILES format  
to TeX code in the syntax defined by the chemfig package (which is in  
TeXLive).

I would like to make mol2chemfig fit for TeXLive also. However, on  
http://tug.org/texlive/pkgcontrib.html, it says that only Perl and Lua  
are supported by TeXLive, and that these two interpreters are supplied  
with TeXLive itself.

Because of third party library dependencies, converting mol2chemfig  
entirely to Perl or Lua is not an option. However, there is also a  
thin client version of mol2chemfig that simply takes user input from  
the command line and hands it off to my server. This is a small script  
and could in principle be translated to perl or lua; however, the  
translated versions would require standard library modules for parsing  
command line input and making HTTP requests.

Could anyone give me, or point me to, information on what standard  
library (or other potentially useful) modules are available to the  
perl or lua interpreters in TeXLive? Does this vary with the platform?  
If any essential modules are missing, could I add them to my package?

If there are any examples / tutorials for how to create perl or lua  
packages for TeXLive, pointers to those would be welcome, too.

Thanks, Michael

-- 
Michael Palmer
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Canada
science.uwaterloo.ca/~mpalmer