Lua, a Misunderstood Language

• moonscript

  35 3,118 4.4 Lua

  :crescent_moon: A language that compiles to Lua

I highly recommend if you're interested in Lua checking out a few of my favorite Lua projects...

1. [Moonscript](https://moonscript.org/) the compile-to-lua language powering Itch.io, it's amazingly pleasant to work with and I was amazed porting a JavaScript tool to Moonscript that the moon version was more readable despite my lack of familiarity with the language.

• love

  258 4,341 9.6 C++

  LÖVE is an awesome 2D game framework for Lua.

  

I'll add LOVE (https://love2d.org) to that list as well. Very powerful and flexible game framework,

Currently working on developing a game in Minetest (https://www.minetest.net/), it is also scripted in Lua.

• InfluxDB

  www.influxdata.com sponsored

  Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale. Get real-time insights from all types of time series data with InfluxDB. Ingest, query, and analyze billions of data points in real-time with unbounded cardinality.

  

• lovr

  35 1,646 9.7 C

  Lua Virtual Reality Framework

I'll add LOVR (https://lovr.org/), the 3D analog to LOVE. Haven't used it personally so ymmv.

• TIC-80

  134 4,744 9.2 C

  TIC-80 is a fantasy computer for making, playing and sharing tiny games.

Also TIC-80, a fully open "fantasy console" that uses Lua by default, but also supports other languages like JavaScript and Fennel (a Lisp-like variant of Lua).

https://tic80.com/

• pallene

  17 572 6.0 Lua

  Pallene Compiler

  

Odd to suggest that if they're interested in Lua, that they should check out Moonscript which is a different language altogether (although it compiles to Lua). But if you insist, something a little more Lua-ish is Teal[1] (gradual types ala TypeScript) or Pallene[2] (companion typed subset of Lua meant to generate optimized C libraries for use with Lua).

[1]: https://github.com/teal-language/tl

[2]: https://github.com/pallene-lang/pallene

• IntelliJ-Luanalysis

  11 145 5.0 Kotlin

  Type-safe Lua IDE — IntelliJ IDEA plugin

There's also my IDE which just bolts on types (both structural and nominal) to regular Lua - no transpiling as the types are defined with comments (or inferred).

https://github.com/Benjamin-Dobell/IntelliJ-Luanalysis/

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to give it as much attention as it deserves recently.

• Yuescript

  7 402 8.8 C++

  A Moonscript dialect compiles to Lua.

Yes, this is unfortunately true.

There's a spiritual successor: https://yuescript.org/

• WorkOS

  workos.com sponsored

  The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. The APIs are flexible and easy-to-use, supporting authentication, user identity, and complex enterprise features like SSO and SCIM provisioning.

  

• neovim

  1,384 76,465 10.0 Vim Script

  Vim-fork focused on extensibility and usability

  

These aren’t Lua projects per se but they are configurable/scriptable using Lua:

Neovim [1] and WezTerm [2].

Neovim is the "hyperextensible Vim-based text editor”--quite the understatement IMHO.

WezTerm is an incredibly well done, GPU-accelerated cross-platform terminal written in Rust and uses Lua for configuration.

[1]: https://neovim.io

[2]: https://wezfurlong.org/wezterm/index.html

• awesome

  223 6,110 7.2 Lua

  awesome window manager (by awesomeWM)

  

Also AwesomeWM [1], to continue the "Lua scriptable Unix desktop".

[1] https://awesomewm.org/

Suggest a related project