Running and Building

Lulu provides a few commands to run your code and/or bundle it for distribution.

Running Lua Files

There are two primary ways to run code with Lulu.

Running a Project

When inside a directory with a lulu.conf.lua file, the lulu run command will execute the project's main module.

# This will execute the file specified by the `main` key in `mods`
lulu run

# You can also pass arguments to your script
lulu run -- arg1 arg2

Running a Single File

You can also run any .lua file directly, even outside of a project.

lulu run path/to/your/script.lua

Bundling Your Code

"Bundling" is the process of collecting all your Lua modules into a single file. Lulu can create two types of bundles:

• A .lulib library bundle: A single Lua file containing all your modules, which can be required by other Lulu projects.
• A standalone executable: A single binary file that includes your bundled code and the Lua runtime itself.

Bundling with lulu bundle

The lulu bundle command is a direct way to create a bundle from a specific entry point.

# Bundle main.lua and all its local dependencies into an executable
lulu bundle ./main.lua path/to/my_executable # .exe on windows

# Bundle init.lua into a library file
# The .lulib extension is important!
lulu bundle ./init.lua path/to/my_library.lulib

Building a Project with lulu build

For projects, the lulu build command provides more utility and customization overall.

When you run lulu build, Lulu looks for a build function in your lulu.conf.lua file and executes it. This lets you define more complex build steps.

A common build process looks like this:

-- lulu.conf.lua

build = function()
  -- This helper function bundles the `main` module into an executable
  bundle_main("main.lua")

  -- Or, to create a library bundle instead:
  -- bundle_main("main.lua", true)
end

With the config above, running lulu build in will create an executable file in the .lib/ directory of your project.

To learn more about creating powerful, custom build steps, see the Build Environment reference.