awesome-lua

Lua's original ANSI C interpreter

Lua Repo

The official Lua repo, as seen by the Lua team, mirrored to GitHub

High-performance Just-In-Time compiler for Lua

LLVM-Lua

Compiles Lua to LLVM

lua.vm.js

Lua VM on the web; a direct port of the C interpreter via LLVM, emscripten, and asm.js

Moonshine

A Lua VM implemented in JavaScript. Slower than lua.vm.js, but with better docs, examples, and JS interfacing

The Lua VM rewritten in Javascript with seamless JS and DOM interoperability

MoonSharp

A Lua interpreter written entirely in C# for the .NET, Mono and Unity platforms

UniLua

A pure C# implementation of Lua 5.2, focused on compatibility with the Unity game engine

lupa

Python bindings to LuaJIT2

golua

Golang bindings to the Lua C API

GopherLua

Lua 5.1 VM and compiler implemented in Go with Go APIs

LuaBridge

A lightweight library for mapping data, functions, and classes back and forth between C++ and Lua

De-facto tool for installing Lua modules as packages called "rocks", plus public rock repository and website. Much like npm or pip

Lake

A build engine written in Lua, similar to Ruby's rake

Luabuild

Highly customizable Lua 5.2 build system

luastatic

Simple tool for turning Lua programs into standalone executables

omnia

A batteries-included creator of standalone executables, built on top of luastatic

Simple profiler that works with LuaJIT and produces a report file

luatrace

Toolset for tracing/analyzing/profiling script execution and generating detailed reports

StackTracePlus

Drop-in upgrade to Lua's stack traces which adds local context and improves readability

MobDebug

Powerful remote debugger with breakpoints and stack inspection. Used by ZeroBraneStudio

lovebird

Browser-based debug console. Originally made for LÖVE, but works in any project with LuaSocket support

Eclipse plugin which provides code completion, debugging, and more. Built on Metalua

IntelliJ IDEA plugin which, among other things, provides code completion, smart highlighting, and experimental debugging

Lightweight, customizable, cross-platform Lua-dedicated IDE with code completion and analysis, written in Lua. Has broad debugging support for numerous Lua engines

Lua editor/debugger extension for VS2012-13 with highlighting, auto-completion, linting, and formatting capabilities

lua-mode

Emacs major mode for editing Lua

vscode-lua

VSCode intellisense and linting

Lua Fun

High-performance functional programming library designed for LuaJIT

Moses

Functional programming utility belt, inspired by Underscore.js

Penlight

Broad, heavyweight utility library, inspired by Python's standard libs. Provides the batteries that Lua doesn't

lua-stdlib

Middle-weight standard library extension; adds some useful data structures, utility functions, and basic functional stuff

Microlight

A little library of useful Lua functions; the 'extra light' version of Penlight

Compatibility module providing Lua-5.3-style APIs for Lua 5.2 and 5.1

RxLua

Reactive Extensions, Observables, etc

Desktop game development platform. Cross-platform, feature-complete, well-adopted

Development platform for iOS and Android. Proprietary, but used by numerous top games and apps, totaling over 150 million downloads

Open source, cross-platform, mobile game development framework. Minimalist C++ engine powered by Lua scripting

Open source, games can run on Linux or on any platform with a recent web browser

Open source, audio/visual toolkit suitable for small games and experimentation. It runs on Windows, Mac, Linux, HTML5 and iOS

3D framework for creating virtual reality experiences, inspired by LÖVE 2D

Simple cloud platform supporting analytics, data objects, user management, and more

awesome-love2d

A list like this one, but focused on game dev and the LÖVE platform

lurker

Shortens the iteration cycle by auto-swapping changed Lua files in a running LÖVE project

A set of lightweight helpers for LÖVE; a game-oriented utility belt

Edit and share short scripts for the MOAI game engine and run them in the browser using WebGL

Jumper

Fast, lightweight, and easy-to-use pathfinding library for grid-based games

lume

Utility belt library geared toward game development

NoobHub

Network multiplayer for Corona, LÖVE, and more, following a simple pub-sub model

bump.lua

Minimal rectangle-based collision detection which handles tunnelling and basic collision resolution

Detect collisions between arbitrarily positioned and rotated shapes of any type

flux

A fast, lightweight tweening library for Lua with easing functions and the ability to group tweens together

tween.lua

Small library for tweening, with several easing functions

termtris

A tetris clone, written in literate style with "an emphasis on learn-from-ability"

PacPac

A Pac-man clone, made with LÖVE

Mari0

Fusion of Mario and Portal, made with LÖVE. See also its

Journey to the Center of Hawkthorne

2D platformer based on Community's episode, made with LÖVE

lua-log

Asynchronous logging library with pluggable writers for file system, network, ZeroMQ, and more

LuaLogging

Log4j-inspired logging library supporting various appenders

Log to syslog, based on LuaLogging

A fast and scalable web application platform created by extending Nginx with Lua. Today's de-facto Lua web platform, used heavily by Cloudflare, Taobao, Tencent, and others

Event-driven, non-blocking, LuaJIT-based networking suite and framework, inspired by Tornado

A collection of web-oriented projects using a common set of standards and components

Pegasus.lua

Pegasus.lua is a http server to work with web applications written in Lua language

awesome-resty

A list like this one, but focused on OpenResty

The core piece of OpenResty. Embeds Lua in Nginx and exposes, among other things, the cosocket API for non-blocking sockets (compatible with LuaSocket's API)

Home of the repositories for ngx_lua, ngx_openresty, and many related modules

lua-resty-http

Lua HTTP client driver, built on the cosocket API

Full-stack framework for Lua and OpenResty. Like the Django or Rails of Lua. Supports Moonscript

ledge

Lua module providing scriptable, RFC-compliant HTTP cache functionality

Sailor

— An MVC web framework compatible with OpenResty, Apache and other webservers

Kong

Microservice & API Management Layer

ansicolors

Simple function for printing to the console in color

cliargs

A simple command-line argument parsing module

lua-term

Terminal operations and manipulations

argparse

A feature-rich command line parser inspired by argparse for Python

Lumen

Simple concurrent task scheduling

ConcurrentLua

Implements an Erlang-style message-passing concurrency model

Library for managing sockets, signals, and threads based on an event loop with coroutines

llthreads

A simple wrapper for low-level pthreads & WIN32 threads

llthreads2

Newer rewrite of llthreads

lanes

Library implementing a message passing model with one OS thread per Lua thread

luaproc

Message-passing model which allows multiple threads per OS thread and easily generalizes across a network. See also where it originated

Mustache template implementation

etlua

Embedded Lua templates, ERB-style

lua-resty-template

Lua-oriented template engine for OpenResty, somewhat Jinja-like

Documentation generator which modernizes and extends

Lua port of , the "quick-and-dirty, hundred-line-long, literate-programming-style documentation generator"

docroc

Parse comments into a Lua table to generate documentation

30log

Minimalist OOP library with basic classes, inheritance, and mixins in 30 lines

middleclass

Simple but robust OOP library with inheritance, methods, metamethods, class variables and mixins

Extends and complements Lua's built-in set of file system functions

luaposix

Bindings for POSIX APIs, including curses

Bindings to common Unix system APIs, striving for thread-safety

lua-path

File system path manipulation library

LuaDate

Date and time module with parsing, formatting, addition/subtraction, localization, and ISO 8601 support

cron.lua

Time-related functions for Lua, inspired by JavaScript's setTimeout and setInterval

luatx

Time, date, and timezone library

magick

Lua bindings to ImageMagick for LuaJIT using FFI

LuaFFT

An easy to use Fast Fourier Transformation package in pure Lua

Sound/music/DSP engine written for LuaJIT

Lua, extended with optimizations and specific features for efficient and portable embedded software development

Numerical/scientific computing framework built on LuaJIT, with an interface to R

Scientific computing framework with wide support for machine learning algorithms, used by Facebook, Google, and more

Assorted libraries and tools, many math- or data-related

lua-cjson

Blazing fast JSON encoding/decoding implemented in C and exposed to Lua

luajson

JSON encoder/decoder implemented in Lua on top of LPeg

JSON encoder/decoder implemented in pure Lua

json.lua

A fast and tiny JSON library in pure Lua

SAX XML parser via binding to the Expat library

SLAXML

Pure Lua SAX-like streaming XML parser

Pure Lua implementation of MessagePack

lua-cmsgpack

A MessagePack C implementation with Lua bindings, as used by Redis.=

A pattern-matching library for Lua, based on Parsing Expression Grammars

lpeg_patterns

A collection of LPeg patterns

LuLPeg

A pure Lua implementation of LPeg v0.12

LPegLJ

A pure LuaJIT implementation of LPeg v1.0

LPegLabel

An extension of LPeg adding support for labeled failures

lyaml

YAML encoding/decoding via binding to LibYAML

lunamark

Converts Markdown to other textual formats including HTML and LaTeX. Uses LPeg for fast parsing

LXSH

A collection of lexers and syntax highlighters written with LPeg

lua-pb

Protocol Buffers implementation

i18n.lua

Internationalization library with locales, formatting, and pluralization

inspect.lua

Human-readable representation of Lua tables

serpent

Serializer and pretty printer

Ser

Dead simple serializer with good performance

say

Simple string key-value store for i18n

lua-zlib

Simple streaming interface to zlib for gzip/gunzip

lua-zip

Lua binding to libzip. Reads and writes zip files

LuaCrypto

Lua bindings to OpenSSL

lua-lockbox

A collection of cryptographic primitives written in pure Lua

luatweetnacl

Bindings to tweetnacl, modern high-security cryptographic library

luaossl

"Most comprehensive OpenSSL module in the Lua universe" - used by lapis, kong, and lua-http

LuaSocket

Networking extension which provides a socket API for TCP and UDP, and implements HTTP, FTP, and SMTP

lua-websockets

WebSocket client and server modules. Webserver-agnostic, implemented in Lua on top of LuaSocket

lua-cURLv3

Lua binding to libcurl

lua-http

Asynchronous HTTP and WebSocket library with client and server APIs, TLS, and HTTP/2; based on cqueues

Simple interface for connecting to ODBC, ADO, Oracle, MySQL, SQLite and PostgreSQL

pgmoon

Lua PostgreSQL driver for OpenResty, LuaSocket, and cqueues

lua-resty-mysql

Lua MySQL driver for OpenResty

lua-resty-cassandra

Lua Cassandra client driver for OpenResty and others

redis-lua

Pure Lua client library for Redis

lua-resty-redis

Lua Redis client driver for OpenResty

lredis

Asynchronous Redis client with pipelining and Pub/Sub support; based on cqueues

lua-zmq

Lua bindings to ZeroMQ

lzmq

A newer Lua binding to ZeroMQ

lua-resty-kafka

Kafka client driver based on OpenResty cosockets

lua-resty-rabbitmqstomp

RabbitMQ client library based on OpenResty cosockets

BDD-style unit testing framework with great docs and Moonscript support

telescope

Flexible and highly customizable testing library

luassert

Assertion library extending Lua's built-in assertions

lust

Minimal test framework

LuaJIT's mechanism for calling external C functions and using C data structures from pure Lua code

luaffi

Standalone FFI library, compatible with the LuaJIT FFI interface

luadec51

Lua Decompiler for Lua version 5.1

Simple coverage analyzer, used by busted and telescope for checking test coverage

luacov-coveralls

LuaCov reporter for coveralls.io

luacheck

Simple static analyzer which detects accidental globals and undefined or shadowed locals

Metalua

Pure Lua parser and compiler, used for generating ASTs. A number of other tools make use of the Metalua parser in this way

LuaInspect

Lua's most powerful code analysis and linting tool, built on Metalua. Used by ZeroBraneStudio, among others

LuaMinify

Minifier which also brings its own static analysis tools, lexer, and parser

Typed Lua

A typed superset of Lua that compiles to plain Lua

lua-parser

A Lua 5.3 parser written using LPegLabel, with improved error messages

punchdrunk.js

Moonshine + LÖVE API reimplementation = run LÖVE games in the browser

luvit

Node.js's underlying architecture (libUV) with Lua on top instead of JavaScript

graphql-lua

Lua implementation of

Fast, small, webkit based browser framework extensible by Lua

A powerful, extensible OS X automation tool. A community-maintained fork of

kpie

A scripting utility to juggle windows

A console-based mail client, with extensive scripting capabilities

A highly configurable and extensible window manager for X, scripted and configured by Lua

Extremely lightweight, customizable, cross-platform editor, written (mostly) in (and scripted by) Lua

KoReader

An ebook reader application supports PDF, DJVU, EPUB, FB2 and much more, running on Kindle, Kobo, PocketBook and Android devices

Moonscript is a dynamic scripting language that compiles to Lua. It reduces verbosity and provides a rich set of features like comprehensions and classes. Its author calls it 'CoffeeScript for Lua'

A static site generator which uses MoonScript and supports HTML and Markdown, page grouping, and plugins

The official Lua mailing list, and one of the focal points of the Lua community

The Lua community blog

An association of individuals with the mission of supporting and promoting Lua and its community and ecosystems

A site for and by users of Lua, featuring an IRC channel, a web archive of lua-l, and a large wiki

Annual 2-day meeting of the Lua community, in rotating locations

Annual 1-day Lua conference in Brazil

Annual 2-day gathering of F/OSS developers in Brussels which sometimes has a "Lua devroom"

The official definition of the Lua language

A large community-maintained collection of Lua information and resources, supplementing the official website

Answers all sorts of Lua-related questions, including many of the form 'How to ___?'

A glossary of some essential Lua terms

A general, high-level style guide; unopinionated, easily agreed on

Olivine style guide

A more opinionated and specific, and therefore more rigorous, guide

Short crash course readover, or reference for when you forget the basics

A well-commented example file which covers the basics

An overview of the similarities and differences between Lua and JS; a great start for JavaScript folks looking to pick up Lua

In-depth collection of tutorials aimed at newcomers

Lua Missions

A series of 'Missions' to work through which are designed to teach aspects of Lua along the way

Walks through setting up and using OpenResty to build a simple image processing server; a great starting point for playing with OpenResty

An introductory walkthrough of embedding Lua in a C program. A bit dated, but still a great walkthrough

A thorough summary of the good, different, bad, and ugly aspects of Lua, including many subtle quirks, by the author of ZeroBraneStudio

Diagrams and explains some more advanced concepts of the Lua VM, particularly when interfacing with C

History of talks given by Lua's chief architect, with slides for each

High-quality talks are given at each ~annual Lua Workshop, and a history of them is online, slides included

The authoritative intro to all aspects of Lua programming, written by Lua's chief architect. Three editions released; first edition available online

A quick reference on how to program in and embed Lua 5.1 through 5.3, by the creator of Textadept

A collection of articles covering existing wisdom and practices on programming well in Lua, in a broad variety of use cases

A shorter overview of the language, up to date for Lua 5.2, and available online

awesome-resty

A list like this one, but focused on OpenResty

awesome-love2d

A list like this one, but focused on game dev and the LÖVE platform

A comprehensive list of stand-alone programs written in or extensible using Lua