[luatex] can't run fontspec yet under TeXLive2013 (pre-release)

[Mico Loretan]

Many thanks to everyone involved in coming up with and posting the recent updates and improvements to luaotfload.sty and luatexbase.sty. (About my system: I'm running a fully updated version of MacTeX2013, OS: MacOS X 10.7.5.) Probably unsurprisingly to some, there's still more work to do in order to get TeXLive ready for the masses. For instance, a LaTeX user who wants to use the fontspec package won't get very far as of now. To wit, the following MWE 

    % !TEX TS-program = lualatex
    \documentclass{article}
    \usepackage{fontspec}
    \begin{document}
    Hello World.
    \end{document}

generates this "output":

    This is LuaTeX, Version beta-0.76.0-2013041516 (rev 4627) 
    restricted \write18 enabled.
    (./ld-test.tex
    LaTeX2e <2011/06/27>
    LuaTeX adaptation of babel <v3.8m-luatex-1.5> and hyphenation patterns for engli
    sh, dumylang, nohyphenation, loaded.
    (/usr/local/texlive/2013/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/article.cls
    Document Class: article 2007/10/19 v1.4h Standard LaTeX document class
    (/usr/local/texlive/2013/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/size10.clo))
    (/usr/local/texlive/2013/texmf-dist/tex/latex/fontspec/fontspec.sty
    (/usr/local/texlive/2013/texmf-dist/tex/latex/l3kernel/expl3.sty
    (/usr/local/texlive/2013/texmf-dist/tex/latex/l3kernel/l3names.sty
    (/usr/local/texlive/2013/texmf-dist/tex/latex/l3kernel/l3bootstrap.sty
    (/usr/local/texlive/2013/texmf-dist/tex/generic/oberdiek/luatex.sty
    (/usr/local/texlive/2013/texmf-dist/tex/generic/oberdiek/infwarerr.sty)
    (/usr/local/texlive/2013/texmf-dist/tex/generic/oberdiek/ifluatex.sty)
    (/usr/local/texlive/2013/texmf-dist/tex/latex/etex-pkg/etex.sty)
    (/usr/local/texlive/2013/texmf-dist/tex/generic/oberdiek/luatex-loader.sty
    (/usr/local/texlive/2013/texmf-dist/scripts/oberdiek/oberdiek.luatex.lua)
    ! LuaTeX error ...ive/2013/texmf-dist/scripts/oberdiek/oberdiek.luatex.lua:55: b
    ad argument #1 to 'insert' (table expected, got nil)
    stack traceback:
    	[C]: in function 'insert'
    	...ive/2013/texmf-dist/scripts/oberdiek/oberdiek.luatex.lua:55: in main chunk
    	[C]: in function 'dofile'
    	[string "\directlua "]:6: in main chunk.
    l.139   }
           %
    ? 

Put differently, LaTeX doesn't even make it to the \begin{document} instruction. :-(