Tools

LDE has support for running packages as tools, which is useful for command line applications, build tools, and more.

Any package is automatically a ‘tool’, simply by the nature of packages all having init.lua as their entrypoint.

lde x

You can run any package from git or a local path.

lde x triangle --git https://github.com/codebycruz/hood

For short, lde registers a ldx alias for lde x, so you can also run:

ldx triangle --git https://github.com/codebycruz/hood

This clones the hood repository, resolves the triangle package, and then instantly runs the package. You can do this with –path dependencies as well.

Git shorthands

Instead of --git <url>, the common git hosts have shorthands that take the owner/repo form directly:

ldx gh:codebycruz/hood        # https://github.com/codebycruz/hood
ldx github:codebycruz/hood    # same repo, explicit prefix
ldx gitlab:owner/repo         # https://gitlab.com/owner/repo
ldx codeberg:owner/repo       # https://codeberg.org/owner/repo

They work anywhere a git source is accepted — lde x, lde install, and lde add:

lde install gh:codebycruz/hood
lde add gh:codebycruz/hood     # adds the git dep under the key "hood"

For a package inside a monorepo, the @ form carries the package name, the same as the [package-name] positional of --git:

ldx gh:triangle@codebycruz/hood   # package "triangle" inside github.com/codebycruz/hood
lde add gh:triangle@codebycruz/hood  # adds the git dep under the key "triangle"

Offline

Registry and luarocks lookups normally refresh their metadata on every run. If you’re offline (or just want to avoid the network), pass --offline:

lde x triangle --offline

--offline resolves the package strictly from the local cache at ~/.lde and fails with a clear error if it isn’t cached yet — run it once online to populate the cache. Installed tools already run this way: lde install writes wrappers that invoke lde x <name> --offline.

lde install

But this is quite tedious if you need to repeatedly run this tool, so you can install tools to your PATH.

lde install triangle --git https://github.com/codebycruz/hood
# Now you can run `triangle` from your terminal!
triangle

lde uninstall

To remove previously installed tools, you can run:

lde uninstall triangle