Building Lua (5.4)

In this example, we are going to quickly build Lua using Jam.

First, download Lua from http://lua.org/. Expand it into a directory, and change to the expanded Lua directory's src/ folder.

[lua] cd src

[lua/src]

Building without a Jamfile

# Build the Lua executable by globbing all *.c file but removing luac.c from the list.
# Both lua.c and luac.c provide main() functions, and we only want one.
[lua/src] jam lua *.c@-luac.c
 
# Clean the Lua executable and intermediates. As there is no Jamfile.jam in the directory,
# the same wildcard file hint used in the build above must be provided to the clean target.
[lua/src] jam clean:lua *.c@-luac.c

Building a statically-linked Lua with a Jamfile

In this example, we'll create a Jamfile to build both Lua and LuaC using Jam.

Create a Jamfile.jam with the following contents:

# Annoyingly, because "lua" is a keyword in Jam, "lua" must be quoted as the target name for C.Application.
# Also annoyingly, luac.c must be removed from the list with a recursive wildcard.
# This will be fixed in the future.
 
# Provide the build instructions for the lua target.
C.ExcludeFromBuild "lua" : luac.c ;
C.OutputPath "lua" : . ;
C.Application "lua" : *.c@-**/luac.c ;
# or replace both lines with:
#   C.Application "lua" : *.c@-**/luac.c ;
 
# Provide the build instructions for the luac target.
C.ExcludeFromBuild luac : lua.c ;
C.OutputPath luac : . ;
C.Application luac : *.c ;
# or replace both lines with:
#   C.Application luac : *.c@-**/lua.c ;

From the command-line, build Lua with:

# Build both lua and luac.
[lua/src] jam
 
# Build both lua and luac.
[lua/src] jam all
 
# Build just lua.
[lua/src] jam lua
 
# Build just luac.
[lua/src] jam luac

After the build is complete, a lua.exe (and, possibly, luac.exe) will exist in the lua/src directory. Additionally, build intermediates can be found in the lua/src/.build/ directory.

Clean Lua with:

# Clean everything.
[~/lua/src] jam clean
 
# OR clean just the lua target.
[~/lua/src] jam clean:lua
 
# OR clean just the luac target.
[~/lua/src] jam clean:luac

Building a statically-linked Lua with a Jamfile

In this example, we'll create a Jamfile to build Lua 5.4 using Jam.

Create a lua/src/Jamfile.jam with the following contents:

# List out the source files individually for this example.
# A wildcard such as this could have been used:
#    *@-**/lua.c@-**/luac.c
local LUA54_SRCS =
        lapi.c
        lapi.h
        lauxlib.c
        lauxlib.h
        lbaselib.c
        lcode.c
        lcode.h
        lcorolib.c
        lctype.c
        lctype.h
        ldblib.c
        ldebug.c
        ldebug.h
        ldo.c
        ldo.h
        ldump.c
        lfunc.c
        lfunc.h
        lgc.c
        lgc.h
        linit.c
        liolib.c
        llex.c
        llex.h
        llimits.h
        lmathlib.c
        lmem.c
        lmem.h
        loadlib.c
        lobject.c
        lobject.h
        lopcodes.c
        lopcodes.h
        loslib.c
        lparser.c
        lparser.h
        lstate.c
        lstate.h
        lstring.c
        lstring.h
        lstrlib.c
        ltable.c
        ltable.h
        ltablib.c
        ltm.c
        ltm.h
        lua.h
        lua.hpp
        luaconf.h
        lualib.h
        lundump.c
        lundump.h
        lutf8lib.c
        lvm.c
        lvm.h
        lzio.c
        lzio.h
;
 
# Tell Lua's code to export the appropriate functions to the DLL.
C.Defines lua54 : LUA_BUILD_AS_DLL ;
 
# Write lua54.dll into the current directory.
C.OutputPath lua54 : . ;
C.Library lua54 : $(LUA54_SRCS) : shared ;
 
# Build lua.exe into the current directory.
C.OutputPath "lua" : . ;
 
# Link against the target lua54.
C.LinkLibraries "lua" : lua54 ;
C.Application "lua" : lua.c ;

From the command-line, build Lua with:

[lua/src] jam

After the build is complete, a lua.exe and lua54.dll (or your platform equivalent) will reside in the lua/src directory. Build intermediates can be found in the lua/src/.build/ directory.

Clean Lua with:

# Clean everything.

[lua/src] jam clean