How Do I Install Lua on MacOS?

Question

I just downloaded Lua from the official website.

I want to install it on my Mac but I have no clue how. And I've never tried using Mac to install and use compilers other then (xcode , titanium , corona) so easy on me please :)

I tried this link but it does not work.

Also Is there a fully guided on how to install and start using Lua on mac? Because all I see is windows :S

note: Before I asked this question I searched on SOV but I could not find my answer.

When you say you tried that link and it "does not work", you forgot to mention what, precisely, "did not work". There are about a billion ways (conservatively guessing) for software to "not work". We need a bit more information than that to diagnose the problem. — JUST MY correct OPINION, Mar 31 '11 at 07:12

score 65 · Answer 1 · edited Jan 08 '20 at 23:00

65

This Wiki has few listing: http://lua-users.org/wiki/MacOsxLua

If you use Homebrew (https://brew.sh/), just type:

brew update
brew install lua

edited Jan 08 '20 at 23:00

jcarballo

27,395
3
28
28

answered Aug 20 '11 at 18:35

jemeshsu

1,784
16
14

score 41 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 24 '14 at 22:53

41

Compiling from source code is not that painful.

Lua 5.1.4 here: http://www.lua.org/ftp/lua-5.1.4.tar.gz Lua 5.2 alpha here: http://www.lua.org/work/lua-5.2.0-alpha.tar.gz

Take Lua 5.2 as example:

Open your Terminal.app
wget http://www.lua.org/work/lua-5.3.0-work3.tar.gz
tar xvzf lua-5.3.0-work3.tar.gz
cd lua-5.3.0-work3/src
make macosx(I believe you have Xcode installed)

After that, you can see 'lua' binary under current dir.

sudo cp lua /usr/bin/lua

Now you can enter lua to have a try. :)

edited Jul 24 '14 at 22:53

Cilan

13,101
3
34
51

answered Mar 31 '11 at 07:09

Prajna

1,217
11
10

1

Thanks so much. After I entered this command sudo cp lua /usr/bin/lua it asked me for a password. I entered my machine pass but it didn't work. can you help ? :S – Mohammad Fadin Mar 31 '11 at 16:47
3

See also http://www.lua.org/faq.html#1.1 Change linux to macosx and after building do `make install`. – lhf Mar 31 '11 at 19:46
Thanks. I successfully managed to run the compiler. I will get back whenever I have trouble Thanks @lht and @Prajna – Mohammad Fadin Apr 05 '11 at 15:51
Thanks for this, worked! Anyone who wants to know, the lua file you need to copy is found under your current dir /src/lua – M.W. Felker Dec 17 '14 at 22:03
7

To make this possible I had to change /usr/bin/lua to /usr/local/bin/lua and it works fine. – rafaelmorais Sep 09 '16 at 09:38
Every guide I've read misses the cp step. its pretty hard to notice that theres a lua bin in there now. The lua binary was in the src directory for me. Also you should install to usr/local/bin – jknight Nov 20 '17 at 18:04
1

should copy to /usr/local/bin instead of /usr/bin – Dang_Ho Jan 15 '21 at 06:13

score 23 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 04 '16 at 05:13

23

If you have brew installed, just try:

brew install lua

answered Aug 04 '16 at 05:13

0bserver07

3,390
1
28
56

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 25 '19 at 15:55

You just follow this guide on http://www.lua.org/start.html:

Fire up your terminal and type in:

curl -R -O http://www.lua.org/ftp/lua-5.3.5.tar.gz
tar zxf lua-5.3.5.tar.gz
cd lua-5.3.5
make macosx test
make install

You can even combine the last two steps to

make macosx install

After that I could just type in

lua

into my terminal and something like:

Lua 5.3.5  Copyright (C) 1994-2018 Lua.org, PUC-Rio

should appear. This means that lua is installed correctly.

score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Aug 21 '11 at 05:41

2

With MacPorts:

sudo port install lua

answered Aug 21 '11 at 05:41

Stuart P. Bentley

10,195
10
55
84

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Apr 08 '17 at 13:46

1

If you have brew, use the following code:

brew update
brew install lua

That works for me.

answered Apr 08 '17 at 13:46

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered May 03 '19 at 06:03

1

Compile using source on mac

tar -zxvf lua-x.x.x.tar.gz 
cd lua-x.x.x
make macosx
cd src
sudo cp lua /usr/bin/

Type lua and you should get the prompt.

answered May 03 '19 at 06:03

Ajit Surendran

709
7
4

Guardian Chen · Answer 8 · 2020-10-10T17:27:09.077

1

I have just follow the Prajna's answer and go to http://www.lua.org/versions.html#5.3 to download the lua-5.3.6.tar.gz

And then use the terminal:

$cd lua-5.3.6/src

$make macosx

After that, you can see 'lua' binary under current dir.

After execute:

$sudo cp lua /usr/bin/lua

You can run the lua

edited Oct 10 '20 at 17:27

answered Oct 10 '20 at 17:21

Guardian Chen

11
2

score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Sep 10 '15 at 06:35

0

The download url show below. http://www.lua.org/download.html

lua-5.3.1.tar.gz 2015-06-10, 276K

answered Sep 10 '15 at 06:35

Zgpeace

3,927
33
31

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Mar 31 '11 at 06:24

You don't "install" it. It should just be a binary that runs from wherever you extract it to.

If you can't find a binary (there should be one linked somewhere on the Lua site) then just follow the instructions to build it from source.

Ah, here are the binaries: http://luabinaries.sourceforge.net/download.html

You'll probably want the file labelled "MacOS X Intel Executables"

How Do I Install Lua on MacOS?

10 Answers10