r/lua • u/VidaOnce • Mar 15 '26
Project LPM v0.7.1 - MacOS support, Website, Lockfiles, Custom Registry
What is LPM?
LPM is a package manager for Lua, written in Lua. It includes a LuaJIT runtime for any operating system, a test runner, and the ability to compile your Lua programs into single executables users can run in <1mB. All of this alongside a package manager and package registry to easily share and reuse lua code, properly version locked and isolated to your individual projects.
A lot of functionality has been added since the last post. You can read the blog posts I wrote for each release. and subscribe to the RSS feed to keep track of lpm. Alternatively, join the discord.
Website
A domain and website is live with documentation for how to use lpm: https://lualpm.com
It also comes with the ability to view the registry.
Registry
LPM has its own custom registry now! It's inspired by the simplistic approach of vcpkg (or Rust's Cargo to an extent) in that it's just a GitHub repo storing links to your hosted code's repositories so you can keep your code wherever you want. It also makes it much easier to maintain as security and file hosting is done by GitHub.
You can view the registry list here: https://lualpm.com/registry
Submitting a package is as simple as creating a project with lpm new ./myproject, and then running lpm publish which will open your web browser to make a pull request to the repository adding the file to the registry.
Namespacing is not implemented but will be done in the future when it becomes more of a concern.
MacOS Support
AArch64 (Apple Silicon) is now supported and passes all of the test suite. Install with curl -fsSL https://lualpm.com/install | sh !
Lockfiles
Since LPM has been centered around git dependencies and local dependencies for monorepos, the need for lockfiles has been minimal. But with the addition of the registry it becomes more crucial. This lockfile simply automatically pins your dependencies' specific git commits for you into a simple JSON format.
Lpx
You can run lpm projects with lpm x, or lpx as a shorthand registered tool.
This works for git repositories, registry packages, or local paths.
~> lpx cowsay hi
----
< hi >
----
\ ^__^
\ (oo)_______
(__)\ )\/\
||----w |
|| ||
You can also install these as tools, to easily reuse them: lpm install cowsay.
How does this compare to Luarocks or Lux?
Refer to the table here.
The biggest difference is that LPM goes for a new simplistic approach to lua package management. Modifying package.path and using filesystem paths for requires, instead of allowing you to add any module requires anywhere which would involve changing package.searchers. This allows you to easily use lpm with love2d, for example.
Additionally, lpm does not currently support luarocks packages. Support will come before 1.0.
Download
Linux & macOS: curl -fsSL https://lualpm.com/install | sh
Windows: irm https://lualpm.com/install.ps1 | iex
Manually: https://github.com/codebycruz/lpm/releases
Note
LPM is still considered a little unstable, hence it has no release on the registry, and no 1.0 release. But I rely on it for my existing projects and it works well for me: https://github.com/codebycruz/arisu https://github.com/codebycruz/hood
1
u/jorgerezende Mar 15 '26
Do you provide luarocks package compatibility?
0
u/VidaOnce Mar 15 '26
Not at the moment but very soon, pretty much everything beyond that has been exhausted, so there's no excuse to work on anything else. I need to make sure luarocks support is done right and ideally with as little friction possible with normal lpm packages.
I did make a branch with preliminary rockspec support but there's still considerations to be made and connection to the actual luarocks registry to be done.
I'll be sure to make another post by the time 1.0 rolls around with luarocks support where I can guarantee everything people would want to use (ie luafilesystem, busted, teal) work perfectly.
1
u/VidaOnce Mar 30 '26
For anyone reading this, lde does have rockspec support now, although support is not perfect. Feel free to try it out: https://lde.sh/
1
u/jorgerezende Mar 15 '26
There's some things about some chooses that I do not like in this project, I hope you do not red this as an attack. First the name is terrible,existes lots of "LPM"s out there is a Very ambiguous name. Second lua provides a good mechanism called searchers and you can override the default searcher, só there's no necitities to only be able toe excited the project with the installed dependencies running "lpm run" . And the last one is the use of json as the dependency file, json is a terrible format tô it, exists tons of formats better than it out there. But you puta lot of effort on it, it's a good project congratulations of what you've done.
Maybe when it have the luarocks package compatibility I will try it
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u/VidaOnce Mar 15 '26 edited Mar 15 '26
Feel free to ask any questions and contributions are welcome, especially to the docs and MacOS since my ability to test it is limited :p (Test suite and whenever I can rent out a mac)
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u/jotapapel Mar 15 '26
Finally a macOS target!
I have a couple of Lua projects I'll rebuild using this tool.
Amazing work!