Install Lua

Official Installation

The official Lua installation instructions are maintained at the Lua 5.5 readme.

Lua Releases and 5.5

Lua releases infrequently by design — stability is a core value of the project. The 5.5 release introduced a number of breaking changes, so this guide targets Lua 5.5 specifically.

Platform Instructions

macOS

The easiest path on macOS is Homebrew:

brew install lua

Verify the install:

lua -v
# Lua 5.5.x  Copyright (C) 1994-2025 Lua.org, PUC-Rio

Linux (Debian/Ubuntu)

sudo apt update
sudo apt install lua5.5 liblua5.5-dev

If your distro’s package manager doesn’t carry 5.5 yet, build from source:

curl -R -O https://www.lua.org/ftp/lua-5.5.0.tar.gz
tar -xzf lua-5.5.0.tar.gz
cd lua-5.5.0
make all test
sudo make install

Windows

Download the prebuilt binaries from LuaBinaries and add the directory to your PATH.

Alternatively, use Scoop:

scoop install lua

Verify Your Installation

Open a terminal and run the Lua REPL:

lua

You should see a prompt like:

Lua 5.5.0  Copyright (C) 1994-2025 Lua.org, PUC-Rio
>

Type print("hello") and press Enter. If you see hello printed back, you’re set. Press Ctrl+C or Ctrl+D to exit.

A Note on LuaJIT

LuaJIT is a popular just-in-time compiler for Lua that offers significant performance gains. It targets Lua 5.1 compatibility, so it won’t run this guide’s 5.5-specific examples. Stick with standard Lua 5.5 for now.

We don’t need its features for this guide.

Next Steps

With Lua installed, head to Hello, World to write your first test.