Lua

LuaJIT is only distributed as a source package. This page explains how to build and install LuaJIT with different operating systems and C compilers.

For the impatient (on POSIX systems): 

make && sudo make install

LuaJIT currently builds out-of-the box on all popular x86 systems (Linux, Windows, OSX etc.). It builds and runs fine as a 32 bit application under x64-based systems, too.

Configuring LuaJIT

The standard configuration should work fine for most installations. Usually there is no need to tweak the settings, except when you want to install to a non-standard path. The following three files hold all user-configurable settings:

Please read the instructions given in these files, before changing any settings.

POSIX Systems (Linux, OSX, *BSD etc.)

Prerequisites

Depending on your distribution, you may need to install a package for GCC (GCC 3.4 or later required), the development headers and/or a complete SDK.

E.g. on a current Debian/Ubuntu, install libc6-dev with the package manager. Currently LuaJIT only builds as a 32 bit application, so you actually need to install libc6-dev-i386 when building on an x64 OS.

Download the current source package (pick the .tar.gz), if you haven't already done so. Move it to a directory of your choice, open a terminal window and change to this directory. Now unpack the archive and change to the newly created directory: 

tar zxf LuaJIT-2.0.0-beta1.tar.gz
cd LuaJIT-2.0.0-beta1

Building LuaJIT

The supplied Makefiles try to auto-detect the settings needed for your operating system and your compiler. They need to be run with GNU Make, which is probably the default on your system, anyway. Simply run: 

make

Installing LuaJIT

The top-level Makefile installs LuaJIT by default under /usr/local, i.e. the executable ends up in /usr/local/bin and so on. You need to have root privileges to write to this path. So, assuming sudo is installed on your system, run the following command and enter your sudo password: 

sudo make install

Otherwise specify the directory prefix as an absolute path, e.g.: 

sudo make install PREFIX=/opt/lj2

But note that the installation prefix and the prefix for the module paths (configured in src/luaconf.h) must match.

Note: to avoid overwriting a previous version, the beta test releases only install the LuaJIT executable under the versioned name (i.e. luajit-2.0.0-beta1). You probably want to create a symlink for convenience, with a command like this: 

sudo ln -sf luajit-2.0.0-beta1 /usr/local/bin/luajit

Windows Systems

Prerequisites

Either install one of the open source SDKs (» MinGW or » Cygwin) which come with modified versions of GCC plus the required development headers.

Or install Microsoft's Visual C++ (MSVC) — the freely downloadable » Express Edition works just fine.

Next, download the source package and unpack it using an archive manager (e.g. the Windows Explorer) to a directory of your choice.

Building with MSVC

Open a "Visual Studio .NET Command Prompt" and cd to the directory where you've unpacked the sources. Then run this command: 

cd src
msvcbuild

Then follow the installation instructions below.

Building with MinGW or Cygwin

Open a command prompt window and make sure the MinGW or Cygwin programs are in your path. Then cd to the directory where you've unpacked the sources and run this command for MinGW: 

cd src
mingw32-make

Or this command for Cygwin: 

cd src
make

Then follow the installation instructions below.

Installing LuaJIT

Copy luajit.exe and lua51.dll to a newly created directory (any location is ok). Add lua and lua\jit directories below it and copy all Lua files from the lib directory of the distribution to the latter directory.

There are no hardcoded absolute path names — all modules are loaded relative to the directory where luajit.exe is installed (see src/luaconf.h).