Alien - Pure Lua extensions
===========================
  
Status
------ 
  
This is Alien version 0.5.0. For more information check
http://alien.luaforge.net.

What is Alien
-------------

*Alien* is a Foreign Function Interface (FFI) for Lua. An FFI lets you
call functions in dynamic libraries (.so, .dylib, .dll, etc.) from Lua
code without having to write, compile and link a C binding from the
library to Lua. In other words, it lets you write extensions that call
out to native code using just Lua.

Alien works on Unix-based systems and Windows. It has been tested on Linux x86,
Linux x64, Linux ARM, FreeBSD x86, Windows x86, OSX x86, and OSX PPC. The Windo$
binary uses MSVCR80.DLL for compatibility with LuaBinaries.

Installing Alien
----------------

The best way to install Alien is through
[LuaRocks](http://luarocks.org). Just do `luarocks install alien`. You may need
root permissions to do this, depending on your LuaRocks configuration.

Credits
-------

Alien is designed and implemented by Fabio Mascarenhas. It uses the
great [libffi](http://sources.redhat.com/libffi)
library by Anthony Green (and others) to do the heavy lifting of calling to and$
name is stolen from Common Lisp FFIs.

License
-------

Alien's uses the MIT license.