On Github we run unit tests inside "busted". At the start of each test "busted" does some sort of trick (clearing package.loaded)? Which causes "require" to run again for all lua files. This breaks ffi.metatype with error "cannot change a protected metatable" if it is called twice with a single type name, since this is true global state. To work around this this patch wraps ffi.metatype calls in a xpcall() so that failure is silently ignored.
