Using wxLua and Lua5.1, bundle the libraries with exe

Sokolas

Hello!
I was looking for a way to write and distribute desktop applications with Lua and when I finally found LuaRT I think it's absolutely amazing! I have several questions that I couldn't find answers to in the discussions (please point me there if I'm wrong)

1) Is it possible to use the same modules available for the LuaRT Studio in my apps? I would like to use the "wx" library directly but I can't import it.
2) I see there are two sets of Lua runtime DLLs (5.1 and 5.4) and two sets of C modules, for example, LuaRT\LuaRT-Studio\bin\clibs has "wx" while clibs54 doesn't. If I understand it correctly, LuaRT Studio uses lua5.1 while the applications use the 5.4 located in LuaRT\bin. Is it possible to write apps for 5.1?
3) If I want to distribute my app, do I just run rtc/wrtc and it will bundle all the LuaRT default modules (net, socket, ssl, json, wx/ui, etc) or do I have to include them with the resulting EXE manually?

Samir

Hi Sokolas,

Welcome to LuaRT Community.
Well there are lots of questions here 👀 :

1) the wx module is made for Lua 5.1 because LuaRT Studio uses LuaJIT under the hood. So it won't load with LuaRT (based on Lua 5.4.4)

2) LuaRT Studio is for LuaRT and Lua 5.4.4. The clibs for 5.1 are used by LuaJIT for the IDE

3) Compiled executables will include all the modules except json and webview (which are binary modules). This binary modules are still available but you will need to provide them along the generated executable. ui module will be available when using the desktop target (-w flag for rtc)

I hope this is are more clear now 😉

Sokolas

Thank you! I understand the structure more clearly now.
However, I think the stack you use for the IDE itself better suits my needs. Can you provide the instructions on how you build the binaries that LuaRT Studio itself is using? (luajit, wx, wxLua, ssl, etc)

Samir

It was rather complex!
I had to run the sh script provided with Zerobrane, which I had to modify, in order to compile the x64 versions of the various dependencies.

I will put it on the GitHub repository if some of you are interested

Sokolas

script provided with Zerobrane

I didn't realize it had one 😕 Thank you, I'll start from there