Lua Version Selector

luav lets you download, build and install multiple versions of Lua. luav was inspired by pyenv and modified for Lua. It is meant to be very portable among systems running GNU/Linux.

Main features

• download any version of Lua from lua.org

  • all information about versions of Lua is scrapped from lua.org/ftp.
  • tarballs are checked with sha256sum

• build Lua from source with any compiler flags

• install and uninstall versions

Dependencies

Besides those most likely pre-installed in any GNU/Linux distro:

• GNU make
• GNU awk
• GNU compiler collection (gcc)
• curl

Setup

1. Clone this repository anywhere

   git clone https://github.com/guidanoli/luav.git ~/.luav

2. Add the bin folder to your PATH variable

   echo >> ~/.bashrc
   echo 'export LUAV_ROOT="$HOME/.luav"' >> ~/.bashrc
   echo 'export PATH="$LUAV_ROOT/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc

3. Run eval "$(luav init)" for autocomplete support

   echo 'eval "$(luav init)"' >> ~/.bashrc

Example

The following lines show how you would install the latest version of Lua with libreadline on GNU/Linux.

luav update                                  # Update the internal version index
latest=`luav all | head -n1`                 # Get the latest version of Lua
luav get $latest                             # Download source code from lua.org
luav make $latest linux-readline -j `nproc`  # Compile source code locally with libreadline
luav set $latest                             # Install binaries and manuals

Usage

Upon running luav help, the following text is yielded.

Lua Version Selector 1.2.0

Usage: luav <command> [<args...>]
       luav help [<command>]

Available commands:
      all  List all indexed versions of Lua
     cmds  List all available luav commands
     comp  Print completion options for a luav command
      doc  Browse through the manual of a version of Lua
      get  Download an indexed version of Lua
     help  Print information about a luav command or about all of them
     info  List information about all indexed versions of Lua
     init  Print initialization code for autocomplete support
     list  List all local versions of Lua
     make  Run make for a version of Lua
       rm  Remove a local version of Lua
      set  Set a Lua version as default
     test  Run luav unit tests (might mess up local versions)
     tgts  List all main targets of a version of Lua
    unset  Unset a Lua version as default
   update  Update the version index
  version  Print the current version of luav