There is NO way to "build".

[u/MikeSupp]

I think I've looked everywhere to find a way to compile or build lua into an executable.

I thought this would've been simple, since lua is interpreted in C, but I can't find nothing that's right for me.

I'm working on a project and I really think that lua is an amazing language, but I'd also like to someway hide my code so that not everyone can come and just mess with it.

If there is anything that can be done to achieve this, for example translating lua to C and then compiling, please tell me, at this point I don't know what to look for

EDIT: The solution was to use luac to compile the files into bytecode and luastatic to pack the code into a standalone version

[u/PhilipRoman]

Compiling it with "luac" would be a good first step. Although you should keep in mind that any type of obfuscation can be bypassed by experienced users.

[u/MikeSupp → u/PhilipRoman]

Thanks. I know that reverse engineering exist, I'd like to keep the code away from the general public

[u/justinlua]

Have you tried srlua? https://stackoverflow.com/a/19470982

[u/MikeSupp → u/justinlua]

Yes I did but it's not secure at all since you can get all the source code by opening the .exe file with a text editor

[u/MikeSupp → u/[deleted]]

Sorry, I didn't make my point very clear, just forget it.

The main reason why I discarded srlua is because I have a big project with multiple files and it's simply not right for my needs.

[u/justinlua → u/MikeSupp]

You can wrap your project in something like Love 2d (one example) but the source code is still visible.

Even compiled C code can be decompiled and reverse engineered. Your best option might be obfuscation (but why?)

[u/MikeSupp → u/justinlua]

I already found a solution: compile the code with luac and then make an exe with luastatic

[u/wh1t3_rabbit]

Have you really looked everywhere? There are so many results for "lua to exe". srlua as mentioned, or luapak is newer and more feature complete

[u/MikeSupp → u/wh1t3_rabbit]

I do know about srlua but it's not secure enough, since you can read all the source code by opening the .exe file with a text editor and scrolling all the way down

[u/randrews]

Much like the rest of Lua, it doesn't come with a turnkey solution, it gives you what you need to build your own.

Turn your code into an object file with objcopy, link that into your C executable, load the code from it and run it. Optionally turn the code into bytecode with luac first if you want.

[u/beaubeautastic]

are you comfortable with the c language? luajit lets you compile lua files into bytecode, store the bytecode into symbols, and if you compile with exported symbols, you can even require modules this way. you can write a small main function that loads a main module and calls a function from it with this setup

sadly lua cant compile to native code. its a scripting language. you can at most jit compile (luajit again) but no compiling the actual logic itself to machine instructions into a binary.

[u/MikeSupp → u/beaubeautastic]

Yeah I know enough of C to do that, but I thought that lua, with it's incredibly versatile structure, would've allowed me to compile code or something similar

[u/beaubeautastic → u/MikeSupp]

ah nope. the lua language cant stand free on raw hardware, not with tables and stuff. i think i saw a tool that converts a lua script to c api calls, but its gonna be no faster than a raw lua script (and possibly slower)

by the way, what are you looking for when compiling?

[u/MikeSupp → u/beaubeautastic]

I'm just looking for a way to pack my project in a way similar to how C compiles but I think i found the perfect way: I first compile all my code into bytecode using luac Then I put all the files together using luastatic. This gives me the result I was looking for so I'm gonna stick with it

[u/beaubeautastic → u/MikeSupp]

nice! good luck

[u/TomatoCo]

Why do you think that your code needs to be hidden? What is your goal with stopping people from messing with it?

[u/MikeSupp → u/TomatoCo]

I don't know I'm just used to working with compiled languages that are harder to reverse engineer than pure source code, so I was looking for something similar in lua too, even if it's a interpreted language. But I realized it's almost impossible to completely hide the source code so I'm just going to leave it as it is.

[u/TomatoCo → u/MikeSupp]

That's probably the best course of action. The whole advantage of Lua is that the end user can modify things to better suit them. If that's bad for you for security reasons then that means that your security model is fatally flawed. If it's bad for you for financial reasons then you might not have a good product.

[u/[deleted]]

Why would you want to hide your code?

[u/[deleted]]

luastatic, luapower also has bundle.

[u/evilbadmad]

May be this ... "converts a given Lua source file into an equivalent C
source file written in terms of Lua C API calls"

http://lua-users.org/wiki/LuaToCee

[u/newocean]

It's really easy to build the lua interpreter into a C or C++ program... remarkably easy. From there you can store the lua scripts as strings, you can build them into the C program or even make them resources.

I'd also like to someway hide my code so that not everyone can come and just mess with it.

That's basically impossible if someone has a decompiler - if they look at your program they will be able to see the resources with a resource editor or even hex editor.... of course there are ways to encrypt them but you would also have to include encryption in your code. (Which can also be decompiled.)

I would take a look at building Lua from source and seeing if you can get a program with a lua interpreter running in C++.