Lua

A little language that can.

Category Date Link Notes
IDE ZeroBrane Studio

a very nice IDE for Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux

Automation Hammerspoon

a macOS desktop automation tool that can be used for window management

Browsers 2024 luakit

a fast, small, webkit-based browser framework extensible by Lua

Embedding LuaCore

A framework for Cocoa embedding.

Frameworks 2024 lovr

a Lua framework for rapidly building VR experiences across multiple platforms and devices

GUI 2020 IUP

a GUI toolkit

2023 TekUI

a cross-platform GUI toolkit

2024 https://github.com/samyeyo/LuaRT

A framework (and accompanying IDE) for writing Windows desktop or console applications

GLU

a Lua GUI toolkit

Game Development solar2d

a fork of the former Corona SDK, now open-sourced

2020 Grid SDK

a game engine for Lua

LISP fennel

a LISP that compiles to Lua

l2l
Urn

another, more sophisticated LISP that compiles to Lua

Libraries feedparser

An RSS feed parser.

Torch7

A scientific toolkit

lua-git

a Lua library that implements some git functionality

2020 ltui

a terminal UI kit

2021 Penlight

a nice set of Python-inspired modules to paper over the lack of a good standard library in Lua

2024 civlua

A curated set of libraries to build a minimalist dev environment.

2025 ldump

Serialize any lua data

lux

a Lua package manager

Menori

a Lua framework for LÖVE with 3D support

Multiprocessing LuaLanes

A nice alternative to coroutines

Music 2025 modest

A musical harmony library for Lua

Runtimes LuaJIT

the official JIT

Luvit

A wonderful variant of LuaJIT using libev

moonshine

A lightweight Lua VM for the browser

Moon#

An interpreter written in C#

luje

A Java VM written in Lua

luajit-libuv

An FFI binding to libuv that seems nicer than luvit

gopher-lua

A Lua VM and compiler written in Go

2020 Ravi

a dialect of Lua with limited optional static typing

2023 MicroLua

a Lua VM for the RP2040 microcontroller with cooperative multithreading and Fennel support

Pluto

a superset of Lua 5.4 with some added syntax sugar

go-lua

a lua VM in Go

blua

blazing fast native Lua for Unity

Mako Server

an all-in-one Lua application server with MQTT, HTTP, database and OPC servers. GPLv2 with a very strange license.

Nelua

a typed language with Lua syntax and AOT compilation that can target WASM.

2024 luax

interpreter and REPL augmented with some useful packages and the ability to create standalone executables

piccolo

An experimental stackless Lua VM implemented in pure Rust

luau

a fast, small, safe, gradually typed embeddable derived language

Tools Hammerspoon

A Lua-powered scripting engine for Mac OS X

lite-xl

a lightweight cross-platform text editor

2019 luastatic

pack and build static executables

luapak

pack and build static executables from Lua rocks

2024 Bounces

a macOS/iOS IDE that allows for live reloading. Sadly, it has a subscription model.

lua-language-server

a language server for Lua

Web Frameworks Lapis

A web framework that runs inside the LuaJIT runtime hosted inside nginx

Mercury

A tiny Sinatra-like framework

2022 fullmoon

a fast and minimalistic web framework based on Redbean - a portable, single-file distributable web server.

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