rua

rua is a Lua implementation written in Rust.
It aims to provide a safe, modern, and flexible Lua runtime and tooling, without depending on the original C libraries.

Features

• Lua API for Rust
• Lua API for C/C++
• Lua Interpreter (rua) with REPL and version switching
• Lua Compiler (ruac) with bytecode disassembly and version switching

Usage

Lua Interpreter (rua)

The rua command provides a Lua interpreter with a rich REPL experience and version switching.

REPL

$ rua
In[0]: print("hello rua")
Out[0]: hello rua

Magic command

ls : list files in current directory

In[0]: %ls
Out[0]: .gitignore README.md function.lua ...

who: show current variables

In[1]: %who
Out[1]: a b c my_function

Run a script

$ rua script.lua

Switch Lua version

Run with Lua 5.1

rua --lua51 script.lua

Run with LuaJIT

rua --luajit script.lua

Comparison mlua

Embedding in C/C++

• Using original API implemented C
• rua provide C/C++ API

Embedding in Rust

• mlua provides Lua API, but depend on several C Library.
• rua provides Lua API, *no depend on C Library

Performance

not yet measured

Version and Features

Lua version and dialect	mlua	rua
lua51	Supported	Planned
lua52	Supported	Planned
lua53	Supported	Planned
lua54	Supported	Planned
luajit	Supported	Planned
luajit52	Supported	Planned
luau	Supported	Planned

Feature for emebedding in Rust	mlua	rua
async/await	Supported	Planned
send	Supported	Planned
error-send	Supported	Planned
serde	Supported	Planned
macros	Supported	Planned
anyhow	Supported	Planned
userdata-wrappers	Supported	Planned

Inspired

• mlua
• rlua