Requirements

Both lde bundle and lde compile produce output tied to the LDE runtime, which is built on LuaJIT. The output is not intended to be used with standard Lua or other runtimes.

Bundling

lde bundle works out of the box with no extra dependencies. The resulting .lua file runs under the LDE runtime (lde run) or any LuaJIT build.

The --bytecode flag compiles modules to LuaJIT bytecode. The output is only compatible with the same LuaJIT version LDE uses. It will not run on Lua 5.x or a different LuaJIT build.

Compiling

lde compile requires a C compiler:

• Windows: lde automatically downloads and sets up MinGW on first use. No manual setup is needed. See Windows C Compilation for details.
• Linux: install gcc via your package manager (e.g., apt install gcc, dnf install gcc).
• macOS: GCC comes with Xcode Command Line Tools. Run xcode-select --install if not already installed.

To use a different compiler, set the SEA_CC environment variable:

SEA_CC=clang lde compile

The resulting binary is fully self-contained and requires no Lua or LDE installation to run.