Installation on Windows

Using Chocolatey

Once you install chocolatey, you can simply run the following command to install Lua

choco install lua

Using Scoop

Once you install scoop, you can simply run the following command to install Lua

scoop install lua

Installation on MacOS

Using homebrew

Install homebrew if you haven't already. Once you have homebrew installed, simply run the following command to install lua

brew install lua

Installation on Linux

For Debian/Ubuntu/ based distributions

This also includes linux mint, pop os, zorin os, and more. If you are not sure if your distro is ubuntu/debian based, search up "is (your distro) ubuntu/debian based.

Open your terminal and update the package lists.

sudo apt update

To install Lua, simply run this command:

sudo apt install lua

If you get an error or output like this:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Package lua is a virtual package provided by:
  lua5.4:i386 5.4.6-3build2
  lua5.3:i386 5.3.6-2build2
  lua5.2:i386 5.2.4-3build2
  lua5.1:i386 5.1.5-9build2
  lua5.4 5.4.6-3build2
  lua5.3 5.3.6-2build2
  lua5.2 5.2.4-3build2
  lua5.1 5.1.5-9build2
You should explicitly select one to install.

E: Package 'lua' has no installation candidate

Then simply install the latest version you see. For example, the latest version on the output I have is lua5.4, so I would run the following command:

sudo apt install lua5.4

For fedora based distributions

If you are not sure if your distro is fedora based, search "is (your distro) fedora based?"

Open your terminal and simply run the following command:

sudo dnf install lua

For arch based systems

This includes Manjaro, EndeavourOS, Garuda Linux, ArcoLinux, CachyOS, Artix, and more. If you are not sure if your distro is arch based, search "is (your distro) arch based"?

Open your terminal and run the following command:

sudo pacman -S lua

Building from source with Linux or MacOS (advanced)

If you want to build from source and get the latest version of lua, follow the instructions below.

Firstly, install the necessary development tools like build-essential, libreadline-dev, and/or others.

Use curl or another application to download the latest version of the source code. At the time of writing this, the latest version of lua is 5.5

curl -L -R -O https://www.lua.org/ftp/lua-5.5.0.tar.gz

Extract the archive file and navigate to the directory

tar zxf lua-5.5.0.tar.gz
cd lua-5.5.0

Build and install the source code

make all install

You might need superuser/admin permissions

sudo make all install

Verify installation (all platforms)

Open your terminal/command prompt and type "lua" in it.

lua

If you see an output that looks similar to this:

Lua 5.4.6  Copyright (C) 1994-2023 Lua.org, PUC-Rio
> 

That means Lua has been installed successfully!