Overview

Installs Lua / LuaJIT / OpenResty + LuaRocks in a single step inside the .lua folder in the current directory.

Usage

name: Setup Lua
on: push
jobs:
  install-lua:
    runs-on: ${{ matrix.os }}
    strategy:
      fail-fast: false
      matrix:
        os:
          - ubuntu-latest
          - windows-latest
          - macos-latest
        lua-version:
          - 5.1
          - 5.2
          - 5.3
          - 5.4
          - luajit
          - openresty
        is-msvc:
          - true
          - false
        exclude:
          - os: ubuntu-latest
            is-msvc: true
          - os: macos-latest
            is-msvc: true
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v5
      - name: Setup MSVC developer prompt
        uses: ilammy/msvc-dev-cmd@v1
        if: ${{ runner.os == 'Windows' && matrix.is-msvc }}
      - name: Install Lua
        uses: luau-project/setup-lua@v1
        with:
          lua-version: ${{ matrix.lua-version }}
      - name: Display the Lua version
        run: lua -v
      - name: Test Lua
        run: lua -e "print('this is a test from ' .. _VERSION)"
      - name: Display LuaRocks version
        run: luarocks --version

Explanation: This snippet installs Lua (or LuaJIT or OpenResty, depending on the matrix) + LuaRocks, and configures the environment for the toolchain that was used to build Lua. When the lua-version field of the matrix assumes luajit or openresty values, it fetches the latest source code from their GitHub repositories, https://github.com/LuaJIT/LuaJIT/ and https://github.com/openresty/luajit2/, respectively.

Note

• On most operating systems, setup-lua uses cc as the default C compiler and linker to build Lua / LuaJIT / OpenResty, which is often GCC or Clang.

• On Windows, when you load Visual Studio developer prompt details (e.g.: ilammy/msvc-dev-cmd) for the Microsoft Visual Studio C/C++ compiler (MSVC), setup-lua adopts MSVC as the selected toolchain to build Lua / LuaJIT / OpenResty. Otherwise, if you don't load Visual Studio developer prompt, setup-lua examines environment variables to decide between the use of gcc or cc to build Lua / LuaJIT / OpenResty.

Further usage

In setup-lua, the most important inputs are lua-version and luarocks-version, so that you can choose specific versions to install. There are many options to tweak setup-lua: see GitHub Actions docs for an exhaustive list of inputs.

Version requirements

• Lua:
  • PUC-Lua (≥ 5.1.1)
  • LuaJIT (≥ v2.0.0)
  • OpenResty (≥ v2.0.0)
• LuaRocks (≥ 3.9.1)

Install specific Lua and LuaRocks version

      - name: Install Lua
        uses: luau-project/setup-lua@v1
        with:
          lua-version: 5.3.4
          luarocks-version: 3.12.0

Install Lua, but skip LuaRocks installation

In order to skip LuaRocks installation, use none as the value for the luarocks-version input as follows:

      - name: Install Lua
        uses: luau-project/setup-lua@v1
        with:
          lua-version: 5.4.7
          luarocks-version: none

Tip

setup-lua also handles work versions of Lua (≥ 5.1.1):

• current work: https://lua.org/work/
• legacy work: https://lua.org/work/old/

Thus, you can test your project on the upcoming Lua 5.5.0. However, be aware that LuaRocks does not support it yet:

      - name: Install Lua 5.5.0 (RC4)
        uses: luau-project/setup-lua@v1
        with:
          lua-version: 5.5.0-rc4
          luarocks-version: none

Install specific LuaJIT and LuaRocks version

Use the syntax luajit@ref with ref meaning a branch name, a tag or the sha of a commit. The example below installs LuaJIT from the commit 871db2c84ecefd70a850e03a6c340214a81739f0:

      - name: Install LuaJIT
        uses: luau-project/setup-lua@v1
        with:
          lua-version: luajit@871db2c84ecefd70a850e03a6c340214a81739f0
          luarocks-version: 3.12.1

Install specific OpenResty and LuaRocks version

Use the syntax openresty@ref with ref meaning a branch name, a tag or the sha of a commit. The example below installs OpenResty from the tag v2.1-20250826:

      - name: Install OpenResty
        uses: luau-project/setup-lua@v1
        with:
          lua-version: openresty@v2.1-20250826
          luarocks-version: 3.12.2

Working modes

setup-lua works in two modes: i) as a GitHub Action; ii) as a standalone CLI nodejs application.

In order to ease navigation and avoid excess of information, a complete reference for both modes can be found in the following documents:

1. GitHub Actions docs;
2. CLI docs.

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