2.6 KiB
Callisto
A featureful extension runtime for Lua 5.4, using POSIX APIs.
Callisto is an extension to Lua that adds commonly-needed functions and features to the language, and includes a file library to manage and manipulate files, a process library to find active processes and manipulate signals, a socket and networking library using LuaSocket, and a JSON manipulation library among many more.
It is a standalone runtime designed for people using Lua as a general scripting language, instead of using it embedded into another application.
Before I made Callisto, I usually had to rely on three libraries: luaposix for basic file manipulation and other routines, lua-cjson for JSON parsing support and LuaSocket for networking.
luaposix provides most of the necessary functions, but is generally aimed towards people who already know how to use the POSIX APIs in C.
First and foremost, Callisto tries to be:
- an all-in-one zero-dependencies library for Lua that includes most features people would need, out of the box
- a library that works and integrates well with Lua and its standard library, and is easy to use
Callisto only works on POSIX-compliant operating systems such as Linux and the BSDs. There is no plan for a Windows port.
Dependencies
To build Callisto, you'll need nothing but a C compiler.
The default C compiler is cc which is usually a symbolic link
to your system's default C compiler. This should be gcc on Linux,
and clang on most of the BSDs. If cc doesn't exist on your system,
change the CC variable in the Makefile to your desired C compiler.
Callisto has zero runtime dependencies, unless you built it with support for GNU libreadline. Lua 5.4 is statically linked in.
Installation
Callisto is distributed as source-only, but don't worry, it's not hard to compile.
First, get the source code using one of the tarballs found in
the Releases page.
Untar it then run make to compile Callisto. The compiled
executable will be named csto.
To install csto (the Callisto standalone executable) and
libcallisto.so (the Callisto shared library), run make install
as the root user in the source code directory.
Usage
The standalone Callisto interpreter is called csto. Running it
will start a REPL so you can execute chunks of code interactively.
csto works like the standalone Lua 5.4 interpreter. To run a file,
run csto <file> where is the name of the file you want
to run. Alternatively, you can put #!/usr/bin/env csto at the top
of your script, run chmod +x on it, and then you can run the script
as if it was a standalone executable, for example ./yourscript.lua.