Introduction

lde is a small and fast package manager, runtime, test runner and compiler for lua projects.

Why lde?

• It already works with your projects. Just run ldx rocks:tl and lde add rocks:luasocket
• You’re on windows and want lua on your system without setting up a full C toolchain.
• It works with your language. lde ./foo.tl and lde ./foo.moon just work.
• You want to ship a single binary to run your code to users without them needing lua.

Getting Started

Run lde new to create a new project. You’ll be presented with an interactive tui.

~> lde new
? Project type
> blank   A basic hello world app
  library A module other projects can require()

Select blank for now.

? Language
> lua  Your typical lua project
  teal  Typed lua with type checking support
  moonscript  A dynamically typed whitespace based language

You can use whatever language you want. We’ll use lua, of course.

Adding Dependencies

Adding dependencies is as simple as lde add inside of your project

Dependencies are stored in a global cache for performance and space conservation, but they are symlinked into your local project as to not pollute your PATH.

Git

You can add dependencies directly from git repositories using the --git flag, or the shorthands gh:, codeberg:, etc.

lde add hood --git https://github.com/bycruz/hood
# or use this for short:
lde add gh:bycruz/hood

Registry

The lde registry is a centralized place to find and install dependencies, it allows easy discovery of dependencies with proper versioning.

lde add process

You can also add luarocks packages this way with the rocks: prefix.

lde add rocks:luasocket

Running Your Project

Running lde run will run your project’s entrypoint (./src/init.lua) using the embedded LuaJIT engine.

lde run
# 'Hello, world!' is printed to the console

Running Lua Tools

Run any remote tool easily with ldx!

ldx cowsay hi

 ----
< hi >
 ----
       \   ^__^
        \  (oo)\_______
           (__)\       )\/\
               ||----w |
               ||     ||

This is the equivalent of manually installing the package, then going into the directory and running lde run.

Test Your Code

If you can run your code with lde, you should be able to test that it works.

That’s why lde ships with a minimal built-in test framework, known as lde-test.

local test = require('lde-test')

test.it("should add numbers", function()
	test.equal(2, 2)
end)

test.it("should not be equal", function()
	test.notEqual(2, 3)
end)

Simply write this file, and then run lde test to see the results.

You can also get test coverage to ensure you’re testing your full codebase with lde test --coverage.

Compile Your Code

Now, we can add dependencies, run and even test our code. But this is all pointless if our code stays on our machine!

This is why you can compile into a single executable without any dependencies, not even on lua.

lde compile

Next Steps

1. Download lde if you haven’t already.
2. Take a look at the list of guides for using lde in your favorite environments!