Awesome Lua

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

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

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

LuaCov reporter for coveralls.io.

Lua Decompiler for Lua version 5.1.

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

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

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

A typed superset of Lua that compiles to plain Lua.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Highly customizable Lua 5.2 build system.

Simple tool for turning Lua programs into standalone executables.

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

Simple function for printing to the console in color.

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

A simple command-line argument parsing module.

Terminal operations and manipulations.

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

Annual 1-day Lua conference in Brazil.

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

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

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

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

The Lua community blog.

Lua binding to libzip. Reads and writes zip files.

Simple streaming interface to zlib for gzip/gunzip.

Implements an Erlang-style message-passing concurrency model.

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

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

A simple wrapper for low-level pthreads & WIN32 threads.

Newer rewrite of llthreads.

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

Simple concurrent task scheduling.

A collection of cryptographic primitives written in pure Lua.

Lua bindings to OpenSSL.

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

Bindings to tweetnacl, modern high-security cryptographic library.

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

Lua Cassandra client driver for OpenResty and others.

Lua MySQL driver for OpenResty.

Lua Redis client driver for OpenResty.

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

Lua PostgreSQL driver for OpenResty, LuaSocket, and cqueues.

Pure Lua client library for Redis.

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

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

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

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

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

An easy to use Fast Fourier Transformation package in pure Lua.

Sound/music/DSP engine written for LuaJIT.

Parse comments into a Lua table to generate documentation.

Documentation generator which modernizes and extends LuaDoc.

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

Lua implementation of GraphQL.

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

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

File system path manipulation library.

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

Bindings for POSIX APIs, including curses.

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

Standalone FFI library, compatible with the LuaJIT FFI interface.

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

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

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

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

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

Detect collisions between arbitrarily positioned and rotated shapes of any type.

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

2D platformer based on Community's Digital Estate Planning episode, made with LÖVE.

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

Utility belt library geared toward game development.

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

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

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

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

A Pac-man clone, made with LÖVE.

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

Small library for tweening, with several easing functions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A glossary of some essential Lua terms.

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

Internationalization library with locales, formatting, and pluralization.

Human-readable representation of Lua tables.

Simple string key-value store for i18n.

Dead simple serializer with good performance.

Serializer and pretty printer.

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

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.

Emacs major mode for editing Lua.

VSCode intellisense and linting.

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

Lua bindings to ImageMagick for LuaJIT using FFI.

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

Golang bindings to the Lua C API.

Lua 5.1 VM and compiler implemented in Go with Go APIs.

Compiles Lua to LLVM.

Lua's original ANSI C interpreter.

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

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

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

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

Python bindings to LuaJIT2.

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

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

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

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

Log4j-inspired logging library supporting various appenders.

Log to syslog, based on LuaLogging.

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

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.

Kafka client driver based on OpenResty cosockets.

RabbitMQ client library based on OpenResty cosockets.

Lua bindings to ZeroMQ.

A newer Lua binding to ZeroMQ.

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.

Lua binding to libcurl.

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

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

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

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

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

A list like this one, but focused on OpenResty.

Microservice & API Management Layer.

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

Lua module providing scriptable, RFC-compliant HTTP cache functionality.

Lua HTTP client driver, built on the cosocket API.

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 ngxlua, ngxopenresty, and many related modules.

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

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

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

JSON encoder/decoder implemented in pure Lua.

A fast and tiny JSON library in pure Lua.

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

An extension of LPeg adding support for labeled failures.

A pure LuaJIT implementation of LPeg v1.0.

A collection of LPeg patterns.

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

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

Pure Lua implementation of MessagePack.

Protocol Buffers implementation.

SAX XML parser via binding to the Expat library.

JSON encoder/decoder implemented in Lua on top of LPeg.

A pure Lua implementation of LPeg v0.12.

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

A collection of lexers and syntax highlighters written with LPeg.

YAML encoding/decoding via binding to LibYAML.

Pure Lua SAX-like streaming XML parser.

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

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

The official definition of the Lua language.

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

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

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

A scripting utility to juggle windows.

Fast, small, webkit based browser framework extensible by Lua.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Embedded Lua templates, ERB-style.

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

Mustache template implementation.

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

Assertion library extending Lua's built-in assertions.

Minimal test framework.

Flexible and highly customizable testing library.

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

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

Time, date, and timezone library.

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

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.

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

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

In-depth collection of tutorials aimed at newcomers.

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

High-performance functional programming library designed for LuaJIT.

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

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

Functional programming utility belt, inspired by Underscore.js.

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

Reactive Extensions, Observables, etc.

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

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.

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

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