1. The native Lua Project¶
Lua on the platform you use with the compiler you choose
Lua is multi-paradigm programming language. Lua is cross-platform as it is written in ANSI C. Lua is licensed under MIT license. native Luas goal is to deliver a framework to build Lua on any platform with any compiler.
For information on Lua see Lua.org.
1.1. Overview¶
As default Lua requires gcc and make to be installed to build the
Lua binaries, therefore building for e.g., Linux or other POSIX systems where
gcc and make are natively available is easy. Building Lua on Windows
with MinGWs’ gcc and some sort of make is also straight forward.
But this does not allow a good platform and compiler independent way of building and testing Lua. Especially testing is not that simple as it should be. Therefore this project tries to implement a platform and compiler independent way of building and testing Lua.
1.2. How-To¶
Building Lua with the native Lua project requires Python 3.5 or greater and some C compiler.
1.3. Supported Platforms And Compilers¶
The current release supports the following platform/compiler combinations:
Platform |
Official Lua Releases |
native Lua Releases |
|---|---|---|
aix |
gcc |
xlc*, gcc*, clang* |
bsd |
gcc |
see OpenBSD and NetBSD |
OpenBSD |
see bsd |
gcc, clang |
NetBSD |
see bsd |
gcc*, clang* |
c89 |
gcc |
all compilers* |
FreeBSD |
gcc |
gcc, clang |
generic |
gcc |
gcc (not win32), msvc (win32) |
linux |
gcc |
gcc, clang, icc* |
macOS |
gcc |
gcc, clang |
MinGW |
gcc |
see win32 |
posix |
gcc |
TODO |
solaris |
gcc |
gcc*, clang* |
win32 |
see MinGw |
msvc, gcc, clang |
cygwin |
no |
gcc, clang |
* means not or not fully tested.
1.4. Repository Structure And Code Organization¶
The repository is structured into the parts described below.
1.4.1. Root Directory¶
The root directory contains the
general project documentation and a changelog (
README.rst,index.rstconf.py,doxygen.conf,CHANGELOG.rst)build script and build toolchain (
wscript,waf,waf.bat),CI scripts (
.appveyor.yml,.cirrus.yml,.travis.yml,azure-pipelines.yml),editor configurations (
.vscode,.editorconfig),coding and general guidelines (
pyproject.toml,.pylintrc,CONTRIBUTING.rst),licensing information (
LICENSE,CONTRIBUTING.rst),and information on the project and the lua version (
VERSION).
For details on the build toolchain see waf.io.
1.4.2. demos Directory¶
Some scripts demonstrating what can be done with Lua. These demos should not use libraries that do not come with the Lua interpreter.
1.4.3. docs Directory¶
This directory contains the native Lua project documentation as well as the
official Lua documentation. The official Lua documentation is found in
docs/_static/doc. This documentation is also linked into the project
documentation.
native Lua uses the ReadTheDocs Sphinx theme sphinx_rtd_theme as
layout theme for the documentation. It is included in
docs/_themes/sphinx_rtd_theme.
1.4.4. src Directory¶
This directory contains the source files as they are downloaded from Lua.org, except that trailing whitespace and additional newlines at the end of the files are removed.
The lua interpreter (lua.c) as well as the lua compiler (luac.c) have
been changed, to indicate, that they were build based on the native Lua
project:
$ build/gcc/lua -v
Lua 5.3.5 Copyright (C) 1994-2017 Lua.org, PUC-Rio [based on native Lua (0.4.0), https://github.com/swaldhoer/native-lua]
1.4.5. tests Directory¶
This directory contains the test files as they are downloaded from Lua.org, except that trailing whitespace and additional newlines at the end of the files are removed.
Furthermore for some tests, require changes to the test files in order to work on platforms. The changes made to these files are indicated by the following comment:
-- native Lua
Test files for the build toolchain have been added in tests/build.
1.5. Links¶
1.5.1. Documentation¶
The documentation can be found on readthedocs.io.
