vfox-lua

A vfox / mise plugin for managing Lua versions.

Features

• Dynamic version fetching: Automatically fetches available versions from lua.org
• Always up-to-date: No static version list to maintain
• Compiles from source: Uses official Lua source releases
• LuaRocks included: Automatically installs LuaRocks for Lua 5.x versions
• Cross-platform: Works on Linux and macOS

Requirements

• A C compiler (gcc or clang)
• make
• curl

macOS

xcode-select --install

Debian/Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install build-essential libreadline-dev

RHEL/CentOS

sudo yum groupinstall "Development Tools"
sudo yum install readline-devel

Installation

With mise

mise install lua@latest
mise install [email protected]
mise install [email protected]

With vfox

vfox add lua
vfox install lua@latest

Usage

# List all available versions
mise ls-remote lua

# Install a specific version
mise install [email protected]

# Set global version
mise use -g [email protected]

# Set local version (creates .mise.toml)
mise use [email protected]

Environment Variables

This plugin sets the following environment variables:

• PATH - Adds the Lua bin directory and LuaRocks bin directory
• LUA_INIT - Configures package.path and package.cpath for LuaRocks modules

How It Works

This plugin:

1. Fetches the list of available versions from lua.org/ftp
2. Downloads the source tarball for the requested version
3. Compiles Lua from source using make
4. Installs LuaRocks (for Lua 5.x versions)

License

MIT License - see LICENSE for details.