Re: Installing Lua

[Eero Pajarre <epajarre@...>]

Ryne Anderson wrote:

> I posted earlier on this message list about setting up lua for vc++, and 
> got some good sites, but after countless hours of trying to decipher 
> material that i couldnt quite understand i decided to come back for 
> help.  First off, i need to see how to install Lua.  Does it need to be 
> installed at all?  In the lua directory there are a bunch of files... 
> INSTALL, README, CONFIG... etc but i cant access any of them.

These files are for you to read. Open them with "notepad" for example.
(assuming Windows because of vc++)


> Anyways, im not quite sure on how to access to lua (even by itself).  
> How can i "run" the script?  I tried typing stuff into the command line, 
> but i cant find the part of lua that the machine runs that actually 
> interprets the script.

If you have picked up the source distribution, you have to compile it yourself.
I think the Install file gives you a hint on how to do it.
(create a project, add the c files in src, src/lib and src/lua into it and compile)

Alternatively you might try to dowload a precompiled version through:
http://lua-users.org/wiki/LuaBinaries
The actual package is in:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=38461
On that page take: luabuild-5.0.tgz

The sourceforge page claims that the package is platform-independent
source. Actually it is a Windows binary !?

You will need Winzip or something similar to extract the
files from the luabuild-5.0.tgz package.


(I have not tested this version myself, except just now to see that it
starts up OK)

> Also, i looked into a thing called tolua which is suppose to bind the 
> c/c++ functions to lua, but its talks about creating a package and then 
> sending the package to lua.  All this material is foreign to me, and im 
> more confused than ever.

You need  something like this when you are combining a C/C++ program or
library with Lua. You don't need this for trying programming using just
Lua itself. When you start C/C++ and Lua integration you should first try
to read the API related sections from the Lua reference manual
(refman-5.0.pdf or the manual.html)

You also need the language part of the manual when you are writing your
Lua code.


		Eero