ZLI - Zig Lua Interpreter

ZLI is a portable lua interpreter statically compiled (on non windows with musl) with additional libraries. The binary can be moved from system to system without any dependencies on installed ibraries.

Currently supported platforms

• Windows on x86_64
• linux on x86_64
• linux on aarch64

Other platforms that are supported by zig could work but are untested

• Windows on x86 and aarch64
• linux on x86, armv7a, riscv64 and powerpc64le
• macOS on aarch64 and x86_64

Batteries included

There are many libraries included in the ZIL binary, some 3rd party lua libraries and some developed specifically for ZIL.

included lua libraries

3rd party lua libraries included in zli

library	link	licence	description
argparse	https://github.com/mpeterv/argparse	MIT	Argparse is a feature-rich command line parser for Lua inspired by argparse for Python
LuaSQLite3	http://lua.sqlite.org/	MIT	LuaSQLite 3 is a thin wrapper around the public domain SQLite3 database engine.
LPeg	https://www.inf.puc-rio.br/~roberto/lpeg/	MIT	LPeg is a new pattern-matching library for Lua, based on Parsing Expression Grammars (PEGs)
lua-zlib	https://github.com/brimworks/lua-zlib	MIT	lua binding to the zlib to compress/decompress
luaunit	https://github.com/bluebird75/luaunit	BSD	LuaUnit is a popular unit-testing framework for Lua, with an interface typical of xUnit libraries (Python unittest, Junit, NUnit, ...)
lua-cjson	https://github.com/openresty/lua-cjson	MIT	Fast JSON encoding/parsing
Serpent	https://github.com/pkulchenko/serpent	MIT	Lua serializer and pretty printer.
ftcsv	https://github.com/FourierTransformer/ftcsv	MIT	ftcsv is a fast csv library written in pure Lua
f-string	https://github.com/hishamhm/f-strings	MIT	String interpolation for Lua, inspired by f-strings, a form of string interpolation coming in Python 3.6.

Custom ZLI bindings to 3rd party libraries

there are some custom lua bindings for 3rd party libraries

library	link	licence	description
Crossline	https://github.com/jcwangxp/Crossline	MIT	Crossline is a small, self-contained, zero-config, MIT licensed, cross-platform, readline and libedit replacement.
unzip / zip	https://zlib.net/	MIT	binding to the minizip library included in zlib for zip file handling

Inhouse ZLI libraries

libraries developed specifically for ZLI that don't use any external libraries

library	description
auxiliary	some auxiliary functions to improve the string, table and file handling
collection	a collection library simmilar to java's collection. (Hash)Set, (Hash)map and (Array)list are implemented
filesystem	providing filesystem functions like listing/creating/changing directories, deleting/renaming/moving files & directories.
logger	a very simple logging library
stream	a stream library enspired by the java stream library that brings the functional style programming to lua.
timer	a nanosecond timer for high precision timings available as os.nanotime

Included tools

In the main binary there are also some commandline tools included. More information can be found in Tools

Clone & Build

This works under linux and windows(under gitbash) for x86_64 platforms and on linux arm all it needs git and zig version 0.14.0-dev on the path

git clone https://github.com/SuSonicTH/zli.git
cd zli
./build.sh

If you want to compile for all the supported platforms use the --all switch, all binaries are saved to the bin directory with the platform suffix.

./build.sh --all

If you want to have a substentially smaller binary you also have to have upx on the path and call:

./build.sh --upx

Tests can be executed by calling

./build.shj --test

Easymode

You can also use the fully automated get-zig.sh script to do everything above and dowload the zig compiler and upx binary for the build if needed. only on x86_64 on windows or linux All you need to have is git, bash and curl. (works on gitbash in windows) Paste the following into your bash terminal. No sudo, no installation, everything happens in the zli directory created in the current directory.

curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SuSonicTH/zli/master/getzli.sh | bash && cd zli

get-zig.sh can also be used in a cloned repository to download the zig compiler and upx binary if they are not on the path, or with option --force it doloads zig and upx anyway.