Setting up Windows for Lua development

#lua #vscode #microsoft #programming

Lua is a delightfully simple language to program in. However setting up Windows to do Lua development can be tricky. This guide walks you through the steps of getting setup with Lua on a Windows PC running Visual Studio Code.

Installing Lua

Create a directory on your PC called C:\lua. Head on over to Luabinaries and download the latest Windows Executables zip file. Unzip the file and place the contents in the folder C:\lua\binaries. You should have three executables and one DLL file.

Copy the luaXX.exe (where XX is the release number, for example Lua 5.4 would have the executable called lua54.exe). Paste it in the same directory. Rename it lua.exe. You should now have a directory listing like the following:

Adding to your PATH

One final task before we can use Lua is to add the location of the executables to your PATH variable. In your Windows search bar, type in edit the system environment variables and open the matching application. You should see a window like this:

Click the Environment Variables button to open the editing window. In this window, select the variable Path from the User variables section. Click the Edit button.

In this new editor window, click the New button. Type in the text C:\lua\binaries and press enter. Click the OK button to leave the settings.

Now open a terminal window by typing terminal into the Windows search bar and running the application it finds. In the new Terminal window that opens, run the command lua -v to check the version of Lua that is installed. You should see output like this:

You now have a working Lua interpreter setup on your PC.

Configuring Visual Studio Code

Open VS Code and click on the Extensions icon on the left-hand side. In the search bar at the top of the extensions list, type in Lua. Pick the following extension to install: