Compiling via source includes

With only 3 minor changes to the sources of Lua 4.0, it can be compiled without using make or libraries (on Linux for now). The basic idea is to create a file "xall.c" with lines of the form: #include "lapi.c" #include "lcode.c" [...] #include "lib/lauxlib.c" #include "lib/lbaselib.c" [...] Then, all one needs to be able to embed lua, is add: #include "clua.c" to the application or module, plus a few lines of code to init and open all libs needed.

This has been taken further by collecting all source files into one, merging local headers once (see http://www.equi4.com/lux/onesrc.tcl). The result is a single source file, containing all of Lua's code as well as optional support libs. Imagine how much simpler distribution of the Lua source could become...

This source file has been used to build 3 standalone variants:

• luxs is a statically-linked exe with no shared lib dependencies (not even the C runtime)
• luxr is a dynamically-linked runtime, without lexer/parser - it runs only compiled code, but with the same libraries and functions
• luxm is a dynamically-linked minimal version (similar to etc/min.c), used for size comparisons with laxr

On Linux, sizes are currently (after UPX-compression): luxs < 200 Kb, luxr < 50 Kb (both include several extension libs for Lua), and luxm < 20 Kb.

The Lux project now has a home at http://www.equi4.com/lux/ - see also Let there be Lux on this wiki.

-jcw