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Top 23 Lua Open-Source Projects
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Project mention: Writerdeck con Debian tty: convertir un laptop viejo en máquina de escribir | dev.to | 2026-05-23
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SaaSHub
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wrk (epoll) gcannon (io_uring)
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NvChad
Blazing fast Neovim framework providing solid defaults and a beautiful UI, enhancing your neovim experience.
Neovim is my daily driver for editing code and configuration files. Combined with NvChad, it becomes a fast, modern IDE with smart defaults, LSP support, treesitter syntax highlighting, and a beautiful UI. I love how customizable it is. I can tweak everything from keybindings to themes, making it fit my exact workflow. Even though it's my secondary code editor, but No.1 in CLI.
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The switch was hard at first, especially file management. I was so used to the file tree on the left of my editor. I tried to replicate that in Neovim with nvim-tree but it didn’t feel the same. Until I came across oil.nvim, this was a game changer for me as it made creating, renaming and moving so much easier. That was the moment that I felt I could switch. I had tried a few of the popular Neovim distros such as Lunarvim but found them too overwhelming. I personally prefer a basic setup with not too many bells and whistles (I know, I used JetBrains before but only used 10% of that editor’s capacity and had a minimal interface configured).
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Cocos2d
Cocos2d-x is a suite of open-source, cross-platform, game-development tools utilized by millions of developers across the globe. Its core has evolved to serve as the foundation for Cocos Creator 1.x & 2.x.
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Project mention: Key, in sight [Creative uses of keyboard shortcuts and macros] | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-05-24
Two notes:
For buying new keys, there are many inexpensive (non-mechanical) USB number pads you can get for $10 or less. It's a good way to get started before committing to something more expensive.
For software, Hammerspoon [0] is a free option that can handle arbitrary key mappings/macros; however, you'll have to program it yourself, it's more of a hacker's tool than something with a friendly UI.
0: https://www.hammerspoon.org/
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AstroNvim
AstroNvim is an aesthetic and feature-rich neovim config that is extensible and easy to use with a great set of plugins
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annoy
Approximate Nearest Neighbors in C++/Python optimized for memory usage and loading/saving to disk
Project mention: Should LLMs just treat text content as an image? | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-10-28Yeah, that's why Erik Bernhardsson came up with the Approximate Nearest Neighbors Oh Yeah algorithm (or ANNOY for short)
> We use it at Spotify for music recommendations. After running matrix factorization algorithms, every user/item can be represented as a vector in f-dimensional space. This library helps us search for similar users/items. We have many millions of tracks in a high-dimensional space, so memory usage is a prime concern.
[0] https://erikbern.com/2013/04/12/annoy.html
[1] https://github.com/spotify/annoy?tab=readme-ov-file
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ale
Check syntax in Vim/Neovim asynchronously and fix files, with Language Server Protocol (LSP) support
The ale plugin (Asynchronous Lint Engine) allows auto-formatting and linting in vim, running external tools asynchronously so they don't block your editing. With the configuration above, you can run :ALEFix to format the current file, or add the following to have it format on save:
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Compare your implementation to Nmap's source code - industry standard for 20+ years.
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Minetest
Luanti (formerly Minetest) is an open source voxel game-creation platform with easy modding and game creation
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The least painful C/C++ build tool I've used is xmake
https://github.com/xmake-io/xmake
The reason why I like it (beyond ease-of-use) is that it can spit out CMakeLists.txt and compile_commands.json for IDE/LSP integration and also supports installing Conan/vcpkg libraries or even Git repos.
set_project("myapp") -
Project mention: 2025's Top 5 AI Coding Tools: Balancing Efficiency and Stability | dev.to | 2025-08-30
Website: tabnine.com Key Differentiators: Lightweight, supports 20+ IDEs, affordable.
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mason.nvim
Portable package manager for Neovim that runs everywhere Neovim runs. Easily install and manage LSP servers, DAP servers, linters, and formatters.
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xLua
xLua is a lua programming solution for C# ( Unity, .Net, Mono) , it supports android, ios, windows, linux, osx, etc.
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awesomo
Cool open source projects. Choose your project and get involved in Open Source development now.
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The switch was hard at first, especially file management. I was so used to the file tree on the left of my editor. I tried to replicate that in Neovim with nvim-tree but it didn’t feel the same. Until I came across oil.nvim, this was a game changer for me as it made creating, renaming and moving so much easier. That was the moment that I felt I could switch. I had tried a few of the popular Neovim distros such as Lunarvim but found them too overwhelming. I personally prefer a basic setup with not too many bells and whistles (I know, I used JetBrains before but only used 10% of that editor’s capacity and had a minimal interface configured).
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It seems to have updated to SDL3 - https://github.com/love2d/love/blob/main/CMakeLists.txt#L178
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packer.nvim
A use-package inspired plugin manager for Neovim. Uses native packages, supports Luarocks dependencies, written in Lua, allows for expressive config
NOTE:
The open source projects on this list are ordered by number of github stars.
The number of mentions indicates repo mentiontions in the last 12 Months or
since we started tracking (Dec 2020).
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A note from our sponsor - SaaSHub
www.saashub.com | 6 Jun 2026
Index
What are some of the best open-source Lua projects? This list will help you:
| # | Project | Stars |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | neovim | 100,193 |
| 2 | wrk | 40,164 |
| 3 | lede | 31,464 |
| 4 | NvChad | 28,224 |
| 5 | telescope.nvim | 19,508 |
| 6 | LunarVim | 19,270 |
| 7 | Cocos2d | 18,998 |
| 8 | hammerspoon | 15,533 |
| 9 | AstroNvim | 14,335 |
| 10 | annoy | 14,246 |
| 11 | ale | 13,998 |
| 12 | nmap | 12,969 |
| 13 | Minetest | 12,928 |
| 14 | xmake | 12,026 |
| 15 | TabNine | 10,793 |
| 16 | mason.nvim | 10,317 |
| 17 | xLua | 10,088 |
| 18 | awesomo | 9,860 |
| 19 | mini.nvim | 9,250 |
| 20 | nvim-tree.lua | 8,537 |
| 21 | love | 8,368 |
| 22 | conky | 8,368 |
| 23 | packer.nvim | 8,090 |
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