Datasheet

You’ll use the make utility to control the build process. This utility reads a script, typically named

makefile, that describes the dependency relationships between the various source files and intermedi-

ate and final targets. For example, one of the lines in Lua’s

makefile is as follows:

lua.o: lua.c lua.h luaconf.h lauxlib.h lualib.h

Here, lua.o is the object file that corresponds to lua.c, the main source file of the Lua interpreter. The

other files that have the extension .h are header files that contain definitions and prototypes. This line

is interpreted as: If

lua.o is missing or if its timestamp is older than any of the timestamps of lua.c,

lua.h, luaconf.h, lauxlib.h, or lualib.h, then invoke the appropriate rule to generate lua.o. The

make utility is indispensable for keeping track of this kind of dependency and for automating the build

process.

If you type

make by itself, as shown in the following line, you get a list of the various platforms on

which you can build Lua:

make

The output looks like this:

Please do

make PLATFORM

where PLATFORM is one of these:

aix ansi bsd generic linux macosx mingw posix solaris

Select the platform that you’re on. For example, if you are compiling on Linux, execute the following

command:

make linux

You’ll see the commands displayed on the console as they are executed.

If you are familiar with building other open-source packages, you’ll notice that Lua’s approach is a little

different. There is no configuration stage to identify the characteristics of the system and create a tailor-

made makefile. Instead, the platform argument you provide is all the information make needs to select

the correct commands and parameters.

Because Lua has such standard requirements, it is unlikely that you will encounter any problems build-

ing it. If errors do occur at this stage, they are likely to be related to an incomplete installation of the C

development tools or incorrectly configured search paths for header files or libraries. If that happens,

read the documentation for your operating system distribution to install and configure the development

tools properly.

With the default settings used here,

make will generate the Lua interpreter (lua) and the Lua byte-code

compiler (

luac). These will be created in the src subdirectory. No shared libraries will be created — all

of the Lua internals required by each of these executables will be statically linked. For example, compo-

nents such as the parser will be embedded into both

lua and luac, but the byte-code interpreter will be

embedded only into

lua.

Chapter 1: Getting Situated

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