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A curated list of quality Lua packages and resources.

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Apr 06, 2018

Resources / Implementations, Interpreters, and Bindings

• Lua - Lua's original ANSI C interpreter.
  • Lua Repo (⭐6.2k) - The official Lua repo, as seen by the Lua team, mirrored to GitHub.

• Fengari - The Lua VM rewritten in Javascript with seamless JS and DOM interoperability.

• LuaBridge (⭐1.4k) - A lightweight library for mapping data, functions, and classes back and forth between C++ and Lua.

Resources / Build Tools and Standalone Makers

• Lake (⭐123) - A build engine written in Lua, similar to Ruby's rake.

• Luabuild (⭐79) - Highly customizable Lua 5.2 build system.

• luastatic (⭐663) - Simple tool for turning Lua programs into standalone executables.

• omnia (⭐45) - A batteries-included creator of standalone executables, built on top of luastatic.

Resources / IDEs and Plugins

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

• lua-mode (⭐292) - Emacs major mode for editing Lua.

• vscode-lua (⭐109) - VSCode intellisense and linting.

Resources / Utility Belts

• compat53 - Compatibility module providing Lua-5.3-style APIs for Lua 5.2 and 5.1.

• RxLua (⭐467) - Reactive Extensions, Observables, etc.

Resources / Game Engines

• LÖVR - 3D framework for creating virtual reality experiences, inspired by LÖVE 2D.

Resources / Game Development

• Corona
  • Coronium - Simple cloud platform supporting analytics, data objects, user management, and more.

Resources / Logging

• lua-log (⭐96) - Asynchronous logging library with pluggable writers for file system, network, ZeroMQ, and more.

• LuaLogging (⭐145) - Log4j-inspired logging library supporting various appenders.

• luasyslog - Log to syslog, based on LuaLogging.

Resources / OpenResty

• Frameworks & tools
  • Lapis - Full-stack framework for Lua and OpenResty. Like the Django or Rails of Lua. Supports Moonscript.
  • ledge (⭐436) - Lua module providing scriptable, RFC-compliant HTTP cache functionality.
  • Sailor (⭐881) — An MVC web framework compatible with OpenResty, Apache and other webservers.
  • Kong (⭐33k) - Microservice & API Management Layer.

Resources / Concurrency and Multithreading

• Coroutine-based multitasking:
  • Lumen (⭐139) - Simple concurrent task scheduling.
  • ConcurrentLua (⭐158) - Implements an Erlang-style message-passing concurrency model.
  • cqueues - Library for managing sockets, signals, and threads based on an event loop with coroutines.

Resources / File system and OS

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

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

• lua-path (⭐58) - File system path manipulation library.

Resources / Time and Date

• luatx (⭐106) - Time, date, and timezone library.

Resources / Parsing and Serialization

• JSON
  • lua-cjson (⭐821) - Blazing fast JSON encoding/decoding implemented in C and exposed to Lua.
  • luajson (⭐240) - JSON encoder/decoder implemented in Lua on top of LPeg.
  • dkjson - JSON encoder/decoder implemented in pure Lua.
  • json.lua (⭐1.4k) - A fast and tiny JSON library in pure Lua.

• MessagePack
  • lua-MessagePack - Pure Lua implementation of MessagePack.
  • lua-cmsgpack (⭐330) - A MessagePack C implementation with Lua bindings, as used by Redis.=

• LPeg
  • LPeg - A pattern-matching library for Lua, based on Parsing Expression Grammars.
  • lpeg_patterns (⭐111) - A collection of LPeg patterns.
  • LuLPeg (⭐226) - A pure Lua implementation of LPeg v0.12.
  • LPegLJ (⭐104) - A pure LuaJIT implementation of LPeg v1.0.
  • LPegLabel (⭐115) - An extension of LPeg adding support for labeled failures.

• LXSH (⭐71) - A collection of lexers and syntax highlighters written with LPeg.

• lua-pb (⭐278) - Protocol Buffers implementation.

Resources / Humanize

• say (⭐29) - Simple string key-value store for i18n.

Resources / Cryptography

• luaossl (⭐123) - "Most comprehensive OpenSSL module in the Lua universe" - used by lapis, kong, and lua-http.

Resources / Network

• lua-cURLv3 (⭐243) - Lua binding to libcurl.

• lua-http (⭐669) - Asynchronous HTTP and WebSocket library with client and server APIs, TLS, and HTTP/2; based on cqueues.

Resources / Data Stores

• pgmoon (⭐322) - Lua PostgreSQL driver for OpenResty, LuaSocket, and cqueues.

• Redis
  • redis-lua (⭐704) - Pure Lua client library for Redis.
  • lua-resty-redis (⭐1.8k) - Lua Redis client driver for OpenResty.
  • lredis (⭐43) - Asynchronous Redis client with pipelining and Pub/Sub support; based on cqueues.

Resources / Message Brokers

• lua-zmq (⭐149) - Lua bindings to ZeroMQ.

• lzmq (⭐128) - A newer Lua binding to ZeroMQ.

• lua-resty-kafka (⭐738) - Kafka client driver based on OpenResty cosockets.

• lua-resty-rabbitmqstomp (⭐186) - RabbitMQ client library based on OpenResty cosockets.

Resources / Analysis Tools and ASTs

• luacov - Simple coverage analyzer, used by busted and telescope for checking test coverage.
  • luacov-coveralls (⭐45) - LuaCov reporter for coveralls.io.

• lua-parser (⭐163) - A Lua 5.3 parser written using LPegLabel, with improved error messages.

Resources / Community

• lua-l - The official Lua mailing list, and one of the focal points of the Lua community.

• Lua.Space - The Lua community blog.

• Lua Users Foundation - An association of individuals with the mission of supporting and promoting Lua and its community and ecosystems.

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

• Conferences/Meetups
  • Lua Workshop - Annual 2-day meeting of the Lua community, in rotating locations.
  • Lua Conf - Annual 1-day Lua conference in Brazil.
  • FOSDEM - Annual 2-day gathering of F/OSS developers in Brussels which sometimes has a "Lua devroom".

Jul 26, 2017

Resources / Books

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

Jul 25, 2017

Resources / Implementations, Interpreters, and Bindings

• lua.vm.js (⭐829) - Lua VM on the web; a direct port of the C interpreter via LLVM, emscripten, and asm.js.

Resources / Package Managers

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

Resources / IDEs and Plugins

• Lua Development Tools - Eclipse plugin which provides code completion, debugging, and more. Built on Metalua.

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

Resources / Utility Belts

• Lua Fun (⭐1.8k) - High-performance functional programming library designed for LuaJIT.

Resources / Game Engines

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

Resources / Other Lists

• awesome-love2d (⭐2.5k) - A list like this one, but focused on game dev and the LÖVE platform.

Resources / Game Development

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

Resources / Web/Networking Platforms

• OpenResty - 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.

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

• Kepler Project - A collection of web-oriented projects using a common set of standards and components.

• Pegasus.lua (⭐309) - Pegasus.lua is a http server to work with web applications written in Lua language.

Resources / Documentation

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

Resources / Digital Signal Processing

• LuaFFT (⭐37) - An easy to use Fast Fourier Transformation package in pure Lua.

Resources / Math and Scientific Computing

• lhf's Lua Tools - Assorted libraries and tools, many math- or data-related.

Resources / Data Stores

• LuaSQL - Simple interface for connecting to ODBC, ADO, Oracle, MySQL, SQLite and PostgreSQL.

Resources / Scriptable by Lua

• AwesomeWM - A highly configurable and extensible window manager for X, scripted and configured by Lua.

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

Resources / Articles

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

May 08, 2017

Resources / Glossaries

• Lua 5.3 Glossary - A glossary of some essential Lua terms.

Feb 02, 2017

Resources / Scriptable by Lua

• luakit - Fast, small, webkit based browser framework extensible by Lua.

Dec 18, 2016

Resources / Cryptography

• luatweetnacl (⭐13) - Bindings to tweetnacl, modern high-security cryptographic library.

Feb 09, 2016

Resources / Game Engines

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

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

Jan 20, 2016

Resources / Documentation

• docroc (⭐11) - Parse comments into a Lua table to generate documentation.

Resources / Testing

• lust (⭐78) - Minimal test framework.

Resources / Experimental, etc

• graphql-lua (⭐171) - Lua implementation of GraphQL.

Jan 18, 2016

Resources / Implementations, Interpreters, and Bindings

• LLVM-Lua (⭐121) - Compiles Lua to LLVM.

Resources / Game Development

• Examples
  • termtris (⭐432) - A tetris clone, written in literate style with "an emphasis on learn-from-ability".
  • PacPac (⭐334) - A Pac-man clone, made with LÖVE.
  • Mari0 (⭐513) - Fusion of Mario and Portal, made with LÖVE. See also its wikipedia entry.
  • Journey to the Center of Hawkthorne (⭐1k) - 2D platformer based on Community's Digital Estate Planning episode, made with LÖVE.

Resources / Math and Scientific Computing

• SciLua - Numerical/scientific computing framework built on LuaJIT, with an interface to R.

Resources / Scriptable by Lua

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

• lumail - A console-based mail client, with extensive scripting capabilities.

Resources / Books

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

Oct 03, 2015

Resources / Other Lists

• awesome-resty (⭐2.2k) - A list like this one, but focused on OpenResty.

Apr 09, 2015

Resources / Scriptable by Lua

• KoReader (⭐12k) - An ebook reader application supports PDF, DJVU, EPUB, FB2 and much more, running on Kindle, Kobo, PocketBook and Android devices.

Mar 15, 2015

Resources / Implementations, Interpreters, and Bindings

• MoonSharp (⭐1.2k) - A Lua interpreter written entirely in C# for the .NET, Mono and Unity platforms.

Resources / Analysis Tools and ASTs

• luadec51 (⭐288) - Lua Decompiler for Lua version 5.1.

Feb 26, 2015

Resources / Implementations, Interpreters, and Bindings

• GopherLua (⭐5.1k) - Lua 5.1 VM and compiler implemented in Go with Go APIs.

Feb 03, 2015

Resources / References

• Reference Manual - The official definition of the Lua language.

Jan 24, 2015

Resources / Cryptography

• LuaCrypto (⭐86) - Lua bindings to OpenSSL.

• lua-lockbox (⭐325) - A collection of cryptographic primitives written in pure Lua.

Jan 21, 2015

Resources / Command-line Utilities

• argparse (⭐205) - A feature-rich command line parser inspired by argparse for Python.

Jan 14, 2015

Resources / Hardware and Embedded Systems

• eLua - Lua, extended with optimizations and specific features for efficient and portable embedded software development.

Jan 08, 2015

Resources / Implementations, Interpreters, and Bindings

• lupa (⭐841) - Python bindings to LuaJIT2.

• golua (⭐598) - Golang bindings to the Lua C API.

Jan 03, 2015

Resources / Parsing and Serialization

• lyaml (⭐163) - YAML encoding/decoding via binding to LibYAML.

Jan 02, 2015

Resources / Network

• lua-websockets (⭐365) - WebSocket client and server modules. Webserver-agnostic, implemented in Lua on top of LuaSocket.

Dec 09, 2014

Resources / OpenResty

• Third-party modules
  • lua-resty-http (⭐1.8k) - Lua HTTP client driver, built on the cosocket API.

Resources / Analysis Tools and ASTs

• Typed Lua (⭐528) - A typed superset of Lua that compiles to plain Lua.

Resources / Other Lists

• Where Lua is Used - A comprehensive list of stand-alone programs written in or extensible using Lua.

Aug 27, 2014

Resources / Implementations, Interpreters, and Bindings

• UniLua (⭐1.1k) - A pure C# implementation of Lua 5.2, focused on compatibility with the Unity game engine.

Aug 19, 2014

Resources / Digital Signal Processing

• Worp - Sound/music/DSP engine written for LuaJIT.

Resources / References

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

Aug 18, 2014

Resources / Debugging and Profiling

• lovebird (⭐257) - Browser-based debug console. Originally made for LÖVE, but works in any project with LuaSocket support.

Resources / Game Engines

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

Resources / Game Development

• Tweening
  • flux (⭐301) - A fast, lightweight tweening library for Lua with easing functions and the ability to group tweens together.
  • tween.lua (⭐485) - Small library for tweening, with several easing functions.

Resources / Network

• LuaSocket (⭐1.5k) - Networking extension which provides a socket API for TCP and UDP, and implements HTTP, FTP, and SMTP.

Resources / Data Stores

• lua-resty-cassandra (⭐67) - Lua Cassandra client driver for OpenResty and others.

Resources / Articles

• Lua states, libraries, coroutines and memory - Diagrams and explains some more advanced concepts of the Lua VM, particularly when interfacing with C.

Aug 17, 2014

Resources / Implementations, Interpreters, and Bindings

• LuaJIT - High-performance Just-In-Time compiler for Lua.

• Moonshine (⭐493) - A Lua VM implemented in JavaScript. Slower than lua.vm.js, but with better docs, examples, and JS interfacing.

Resources / Debugging and Profiling

• ProFi - Simple profiler that works with LuaJIT and produces a report file.

• luatrace (⭐157) - Toolset for tracing/analyzing/profiling script execution and generating detailed reports.

• StackTracePlus (⭐180) - Drop-in upgrade to Lua's stack traces which adds local context and improves readability.

• MobDebug (⭐778) - Powerful remote debugger with breakpoints and stack inspection. Used by ZeroBraneStudio.

Resources / IDEs and Plugins

• Lua for IDEA - IntelliJ IDEA plugin which, among other things, provides code completion, smart highlighting, and experimental debugging.

Resources / Utility Belts

• Moses (⭐590) - Functional programming utility belt, inspired by Underscore.js.

• Penlight (⭐1.6k) - Broad, heavyweight utility library, inspired by Python's standard libs. Provides the batteries that Lua doesn't.

• lua-stdlib (⭐259) - Middle-weight standard library extension; adds some useful data structures, utility functions, and basic functional stuff.

• Microlight (⭐156) - A little library of useful Lua functions; the 'extra light' version of Penlight.

Resources / Game Engines

• LÖVE 2D - Desktop game development platform. Cross-platform, feature-complete, well-adopted.

Resources / Game Development

• Jumper (⭐575) - Fast, lightweight, and easy-to-use pathfinding library for grid-based games.

• lume (⭐761) - Utility belt library geared toward game development.

• NoobHub (⭐273) - Network multiplayer for Corona, LÖVE, and more, following a simple pub-sub model.

• Collision detection
  • bump.lua (⭐769) - Minimal rectangle-based collision detection which handles tunnelling and basic collision resolution.
  • HardonCollider - Detect collisions between arbitrarily positioned and rotated shapes of any type.

Resources / OpenResty

• Core platform
  • ngx_lua - 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).
  • OpenResty GitHub Organization - Home of the repositories for ngx_lua, ngx_openresty, and many related modules.

Resources / Command-line Utilities

• ansicolors (⭐107) - Simple function for printing to the console in color.

• cliargs (⭐96) - A simple command-line argument parsing module.

• lua-term (⭐114) - Terminal operations and manipulations.

Resources / Concurrency and Multithreading

• Multithreading:
  • llthreads (⭐141) - A simple wrapper for low-level pthreads & WIN32 threads.
  • llthreads2 (⭐69) - Newer rewrite of llthreads.
  • lanes (⭐381) - Library implementing a message passing model with one OS thread per Lua thread.
  • luaproc (⭐105) - Message-passing model which allows multiple threads per OS thread and easily generalizes across a network. See also the paper where it originated.

Resources / Templating

• lustache - Mustache template implementation.

• etlua (⭐187) - Embedded Lua templates, ERB-style.

• lua-resty-template (⭐852) - Lua-oriented template engine for OpenResty, somewhat Jinja-like.

Resources / Documentation

• LDoc - Documentation generator which modernizes and extends LuaDoc.

Resources / Object-oriented Programming

• 30log (⭐381) - Minimalist OOP library with basic classes, inheritance, and mixins in 30 lines.

• middleclass (⭐1.5k) - Simple but robust OOP library with inheritance, methods, metamethods, class variables and mixins.

Resources / File system and OS

• luaposix (⭐441) - Bindings for POSIX APIs, including curses.

Resources / Time and Date

• LuaDate (⭐225) - Date and time module with parsing, formatting, addition/subtraction, localization, and ISO 8601 support.

• cron.lua (⭐149) - Time-related functions for Lua, inspired by JavaScript's setTimeout and setInterval.

Resources / Image Manipulation

• magick (⭐362) - Lua bindings to ImageMagick for LuaJIT using FFI.

Resources / Math and Scientific Computing

• Torch7 - Scientific computing framework with wide support for machine learning algorithms, used by Facebook, Google, and more.

Resources / Parsing and Serialization

• XML
  • LuaExpat - SAX XML parser via binding to the Expat library.
  • SLAXML (⭐141) - Pure Lua SAX-like streaming XML parser.

• lunamark (⭐166) - Converts Markdown to other textual formats including HTML and LaTeX. Uses LPeg for fast parsing.

Resources / Humanize

• i18n.lua (⭐218) - Internationalization library with locales, formatting, and pluralization.

• inspect.lua (⭐1.1k) - Human-readable representation of Lua tables.

• serpent (⭐464) - Serializer and pretty printer.

• Ser (⭐72) - Dead simple serializer with good performance.

Resources / Compression

• lua-zlib (⭐246) - Simple streaming interface to zlib for gzip/gunzip.

• lua-zip (⭐69) - Lua binding to libzip. Reads and writes zip files.

Resources / Data Stores

• lua-resty-mysql (⭐666) - Lua MySQL driver for OpenResty.

Resources / Testing

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

• telescope (⭐153) - Flexible and highly customizable testing library.

• luassert (⭐137) - Assertion library extending Lua's built-in assertions.

Resources / Foreign Function Interfaces

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

• luaffi (⭐441) - Standalone FFI library, compatible with the LuaJIT FFI interface.

Resources / Analysis Tools and ASTs

• luacheck (⭐1.7k) - Simple static analyzer which detects accidental globals and undefined or shadowed locals.

• Metalua (⭐324) - Pure Lua parser and compiler, used for generating ASTs. A number of other tools make use of the Metalua parser in this way.

• LuaInspect (⭐160) - Lua's most powerful code analysis and linting tool, built on Metalua. Used by ZeroBraneStudio, among others.

• LuaMinify (⭐231) - Minifier which also brings its own static analysis tools, lexer, and parser.

Resources / Experimental, etc

• punchdrunk.js (⭐79) - Moonshine + LÖVE API reimplementation = run LÖVE games in the browser.

• luvit (⭐3.6k) - Node.js's underlying architecture (libUV) with Lua on top instead of JavaScript.

Resources / Scriptable by Lua

• kpie (⭐76) - A scripting utility to juggle windows.

Resources / Miscellaneous

• MoonScript - 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'.

• sitegen - A static site generator which uses MoonScript and supports HTML and Markdown, page grouping, and plugins.

Resources / References

• lua-users wiki - A large community-maintained collection of Lua information and resources, supplementing the official website.

Resources / Style Guides

• Lua-users style guide - A general, high-level style guide; unopinionated, easily agreed on.

• Olivine style guide (⭐445) - A more opinionated and specific, and therefore more rigorous, guide.

Resources / Tutorials

• Lua Crash Course - Short crash course readover, or reference for when you forget the basics.

• Learn Lua in 15 Minutes - A well-commented example file which covers the basics.

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

• lua-users tutorial - In-depth collection of tutorials aimed at newcomers.

• Lua Missions (⭐318) - A series of 'Missions' to work through which are designed to teach aspects of Lua along the way.

• Creating an Image Server - Walks through setting up and using OpenResty to build a simple image processing server; a great starting point for playing with OpenResty.

Resources / Articles

• Lua: Good, bad, and ugly parts - A thorough summary of the good, different, bad, and ugly aspects of Lua, including many subtle quirks, by the author of ZeroBraneStudio.

Resources / Talks & Slides

• Roberto's Talks - History of talks given by Lua's chief architect, with slides for each.

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

Resources / Books

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

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