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I have a program and I want to output the program results as PDF. I am considering to use LATEX to do the work. My results may contain many big tables, I just realized it is not so direct to output long tables in LATEX (for example, need longtable package).
My question is, longtable is the best solution or most popular one? Any alternatives?
multipage table packages include at least longtable, supertabular, tabu, xtab, cals. They all have good and bad points.
I do not understand your comment that it is not "direct" to output long tables. Most latex functionality is provided in class or package files that have to be referenced from the document. table environment and sectioning commands like \section require a class such as article for example, they are not defined in the latex format.
Of the packages mentioned above, longtable is part of the core latex release, but these days most people use tex from large distributions like texlive or miktex so there is not really any problem in using instead one of the contributed packages, if you prefer.
I suggest longtblr in tabularray over longtable in case someone needs it.
xtabandsupertabularare alternatives (tex.stackexchange.com/questions/133), though I cannot say how they compare tolongtable.longtableorltablexis okay. is okaylongtabualso does this, I think, and maybe some of the other newer table packages. ctan will have a list for an appropriate topic, I'm sure.