9 ms·

Fast Lua runtime written in Rust

84 points by akagusu 11mo ago

andsoitis 11mo ago
100% of Lua?
- vrighter 11mo ago
  It's a runtime, not a lua interpreter/jit. The first sentence in its readme is the following: "Astra is a web server runtime for Lua (5.1-5.4), Luau and LuaJIT written in Rust with native support for Teal."
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  - andsoitis 11mo ago
    > It's a runtime, not a lua interpreter/jit. Would you say the Lua interpreter is also a Lua runtime?
    - vrighter 11mo ago
      the lua interpreter by itself is similar in scope to freestanding c. You can do anything, but you have to do everything. Lua doesn't come with much. Just some very basic file io (not even including listing files). Stuff that embeds lua is supposed to provide a runtime for lua programs to actually interact with.
      - andsoitis 11mo ago
        > Lua doesn't come with much. Just some very basic file io (not even including listing files) Don’t most people simply use the LuaFileSystem library for that? https://github.com/lunarmodules/luafilesystem https://github.com/lunarmodules/luafilesystem I think you (and the project) are using “runtime” when what you really mean environment.
        vrighter 11mo ago
        Yes most do. But that is not part of lua. That is just a library one can load. It's written in C. The lua interpreter does not allow any access to the outside world. That rudimentary "built-in" io that's included with lua? It's actually a library shipped with the interpreter, that you need to explicitly load in from the C side of things. Exiting with a process exit code? Optional library. String operations such as pattern matching? Optional library. Math? Optional library. Debugging? Optional library. If you didn't load any of these, then the only I/O you could do is to stdout with the print statement. When you instantiate a new lua state, you are expected to provide your own runtime. It's a language designed to be embedded in other software. Take, for example, libc. It's the C runtime. It doesn't compile or interpret C. libc is just a bunch of C code (with assembly sprinkled in, of course).
  - debugnik 11mo ago
    The interpreter/jit has traditionally been considered part of a dynamic language runtime, arguably the major part, before JS-brained companies started to call their every repackaging of V8/JSC a runtime (which is technically correct but only considering part of them is off-the-shelf).
VWWHFSfQ 11mo ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like this is using the mlua Rust bindings (which are excellent). It's not a Lua runtime from-scratch in Rust. It's the regular C Lua/LuaJIT with a Rust interface.
- vrighter 11mo ago
  You're thinking of the interpreter, not the runtime. The runtime is libraries, not the interpreter. The async-io frameworks and stuff like that. Just like how node.js is a javascript runtime, it uses the V8 engine, and bun is also a javascript runtime that uses javascriptcore instead. Neither one of them wrote their own javascript interpreter.
  - Lerc 11mo ago
    I think of the runtime as the whole execution stack. The interpreter, engine, JIT etc. is the back end. The interface to the world is a wrapper around that. I would describe this as a Lua wrapper written in Rust. That carries the clear indication that you should not expect the interpreter to be written in Rust. I would be (and indeed was) disappointed to see that this 'Lua runtime' did not have a Rust implementation of Lua. I would be much more interested in seeing that than a wrapper.
    - ElhamAryanpur 11mo ago
      You are correct on this, I should have been more clear about the description. When I wrote the description I was in the headspace of BunJS and Deno. I will make note of this and write a better README description.
joshlk 11mo ago
The top claim is that it's "Incredibly Fast" but I can't find any performance benchmarks. Can anyone find a link?
- coderedart 11mo ago
  It seems to just be re-exposing existing lua runtimes, which makes the naming very unfortunate IMO. The underlying runtime Luau, for example, details its performance here https://luau.org/performance https://luau.org/performance . Luajit is already popular and has plenty of benchmarks online.
  - gpm 11mo ago
    I assume the relevant performance benchmarking would be of the http server APIs it exposes to lua, not lua itself.
nalekberov 11mo ago
[flagged]
- phplovesong 11mo ago
  This would be a best seller. HN without Rust and AI, thats the golden braid.
- nalekberov 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - Lerc 11mo ago
    Or it could be that you posted an insubstansive comment that added little to the conversation. I don't use Rust. I certainly don't advocate for it, but I don't mind seeing posts about things people have done in Rust. I also don't use Lisp or Forth. I'd be quite interested to see people posting new projects that do real world things with those. Seeing languages being used helps you see what tools are the right ones for the job.
    - nalekberov 11mo ago
      [flagged]
- slightwinder 11mo ago
  As I remember, you can just use ublock origin and some cosmetic filter with :has-text() or something.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- Aurornis 11mo ago
  If you’re not interested, don’t click it. But please don’t come to the comment section and write multiple comments complaining about its existence.
bcardarella 11mo ago
"written in Rust" ok
- phplovesong 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - sensen 11mo ago
    I don't see any reference to `0xiDizEd` in the docs or on github. Are you sure that you're discussing the right project?
fullstop 11mo ago
I transpiled Lua into wasm so that I can run in a browser. It has very little practical purpose, but I thought that it was kind of cool. https://i.imgur.com/ErSNVoR.png https://i.imgur.com/ErSNVoR.png
- nhatcher 11mo ago
  I don't know I think it could be useful. I did this a while ago: https://github.com/nhatcher/ariana-lua https://github.com/nhatcher/ariana-lua But next time I think I would like to have a language that compiles in the browser to wasm
mwkaufma 11mo ago
Misleading use of the term "runtime" as it does not implement lua, but just links nonrust implementations into a webserver "runtime."
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- creata 11mo ago
  Yep. Specifically, the crate uses mlua: https://github.com/ArkForgeLabs/Astra/blob/f812bb0dc2881d74061b53178e05d9d76ec13790/Cargo.toml#L34-L42 https://github.com/ArkForgeLabs/Astra/blob/f812bb0dc2881d740...
- gpm 11mo ago
  That's exactly how the term runtime is consistently used in the JS world... not sure it's misleading at all. Certainly less exciting/ambitious than if the interpreter was also rewritten, but its what it says on the tin as I understand the words.
  - pjmlp 11mo ago
    V8 and JSCore are a runtimes, everything else is made up stuff by people without background in compilers.
  - nerdponx 11mo ago
    That's not at all what a runtime is, in any context, ever. Where else have you seen this solecism? It's new to me.
    - munificent 11mo ago
      First sentence of the Wikipedia article for Node.js: > Node.js is a cross-platform, open-source JavaScript runtime environment that can run on Windows, Linux, Unix, macOS, and more. First sentence for the Wikipedia article Deno: > Deno is a runtime for JavaScript, TypeScript, and WebAssembly that is based on the V8 JavaScript engine and the Rust programming language. First line of hero text from Node.js's site: > Node.js® is a free, open-source, cross-platform JavaScript runtime environment that lets developers create servers, web apps, command line tools and scripts. First line of hero text from Deno's site: > Deno is the open-source JavaScript runtime for the modern web.
benwilber0 11mo ago
Looks neat. I built a programmable server for Server-Sent Events using a similar stack (Rust/mlua/axum) [1]. I think the Rust/Lua interop story is pretty good. [1] https://github.com/benwilber/tinysse https://github.com/benwilber/tinysse
anentropic 11mo ago
Light-mode CSS is broken https://astra.arkforge.net/docs/latest/internals/structure.html https://astra.arkforge.net/docs/latest/internals/structure.h... (looks as if `code` words are redacted LOL)
- ElhamAryanpur 11mo ago
  Oh I missed that, thank you! Will open an issue for this
johnisgood 11mo ago
How does it compare to LuaJIT? LuaJIT is super performant, that I know.
- ElhamAryanpur 11mo ago
  It isn't a replacement for the LuaJIT. Rather a wrapper over it with Rust libraries being available for use. Batteries included essentially.
  - johnisgood 11mo ago
    > Astra is a web server runtime for Lua (5.1-5.4), Luau and LuaJIT written in Rust with native support for Teal. Seems like it is a web server runime only? Hmm, the website is confusing because: https://astra.arkforge.net/docs/latest/std/serde.html https://astra.arkforge.net/docs/latest/std/serde.html Although even on https://astra.arkforge.net/docs/latest/std/crypto.html https://astra.arkforge.net/docs/latest/std/crypto.html it mentions it is for web servers. ("During development of your web servers [...]") So ultimately it indeed is for webservers, and the utilities are, too. > Rather a wrapper over it with Rust libraries being available for use. Batteries included essentially Any Rust libraries? Are there code snippets for random Rust libraries unrelated to webservers?
    - ElhamAryanpur 11mo ago
      I am stating it can be, and already is, used for other tasks, not just web servers. Although the server and networking cases were originally what it was built for and the plans were stay there. Not "any" Rust library, the idea is to not reinvent the already made libraries out there for the use cases of the standard library, and rather make an interop with Lua. I am not sure what would count as unrelated to webservers but there are file system, templating, database, cryptography (minimal at the moment), serialization and deserialization moudles, with upcoming compression, logging, testing, and more coming soon https://github.com/ArkForgeLabs/Astra/issues/114 https://github.com/ArkForgeLabs/Astra/issues/114
      - 11mo ago
csnover 11mo ago
As others have noted, this is not actually a Lua engine written in Rust. It is a wrapper over existing C/C++ implementations of Lua. There is, however, an actual Lua engine written in Rust. It is called piccolo.[0] [0] https://github.com/kyren/piccolo https://github.com/kyren/piccolo
- znpy 11mo ago
  Is this one of those things that claims to be fast purely by virtue of being written in rust?
  - gpm 11mo ago
    Considering one of the project goals at the top of the readme is "Don't be obnoxiously slow" obviously not - it doesn't claim to be fast at all.
    - znpy 11mo ago
      the first line of text in the web page is literally "Blazingly-Fast Lua runtime"
      - gpm 11mo ago
        You responded to a post about https://github.com/kyren/piccolo https://github.com/kyren/piccolo, not to the top level post about an entirely different project. The word "blazingly" exists nowhere on piccolo's github page according to ctrl-f.
forgotpwd16 11mo ago
Not sure what this is. The homepage shows making an API in Lua. So is a web framework? In any case, a bad description term-wise. Being referred to as runtime made sense for Node & JS, since JS was until Node mostly confined to web browsers with Node setting it free giving native OS access, an event loop, and even a module system. Lua, Python, etc are already shipping as their own self-contained runtime. So calling a Lua, Python, etc wrapper in X as runtime written in X makes no sense.
- benwilber0 11mo ago
  The "runtime" word is very confusing in this case. It's a web application server written in Rust (Axum/Tokio), that has hooks into Lua bindings (mlua) so that application behaviors can be implemented in Lua.
- ElhamAryanpur 11mo ago
  While I agree it is not in the technical terms a runtime, the inspiration for it was from BunJS and Deno and such. Similar projects in the Lua space also name themselves as runtime, so I wrote runtime as well. It is not exclusively for web, although it started as that. Nowadays Astra has libraries for many general things, and are used in a wide range of projects, from scripting, CI/CD, API servers, and more. Lua does ship a runtime, although it is incredibly limited in standard library, and lacks a lot of features that other languages ship out of the box. I could have either made a library to be used with each Lua VM or package everything into a single binary which was what we needed for our use case anyways, and gave a lot of control for us as well. In any case, I agree that I should have been more clear in the description. It has not been updated since a while and the project moves very fast.
coderedart 11mo ago
The naming is definitely unfortunate, as I was briefly excited for a lua VM written in rust. Anyway, for those who want a lua version of nodejs/bun/deno, try looking at https://luvit.io/ https://luvit.io/ (lua) or https://lune-org.github.io/docs/ https://lune-org.github.io/docs/ (luau - AKA roblox lua).
- brabel 11mo ago
  If you want a Lua webserver, the way to go imo is Redbean. https://redbean.dev/ https://redbean.dev/ Based on CosmopolitanC with incredible performance and single binary runs on any platform. There is also MakoServer. https://makoserver.net/ https://makoserver.net/ More for embedded but runs in anything and also very batteries included, like Redbean including SQLite and JSON for example.
  - kevinfiol 11mo ago
    Redbean is very fun. I built a mini Markdown-based CMS with it earlier this year: https://github.com/kevinfiol/beancms https://github.com/kevinfiol/beancms
- johnisgood 11mo ago
  I have used luvit and I can recommend. I used it for my Discord bot written in Lua.
Will-Reppeto 11mo ago
[dead]
pjmlp 11mo ago
Not to be missed up with Astra, a Wordpress plugin. https://wpastra.com/ https://wpastra.com/ Naming is hard.
- ElhamAryanpur 11mo ago
  hahaha it really is. Astro is another project that it also clashes with. When I was naming it, I was thinking of Warhammer's Astra Millitarum. But I forgot that it is a very popular name in general... my bad
james2doyle 11mo ago
There seems to be quite a few of projects like this these days: * https://github.com/Scythe-Technology/zune https://github.com/Scythe-Technology/zune * https://github.com/lune-org/lune https://github.com/lune-org/lune * https://github.com/luau-lang/lute https://github.com/luau-lang/lute * https://github.com/seal-runtime/seal https://github.com/seal-runtime/seal All slightly different. Personally, I like Lune and Zune. Have used both to play around and find them fun to use
- kevinfiol 11mo ago
  I think luvit [1] by Tim Caswell was the first one I saw that got me excited many years ago. I love to see passion for Lua/Lua derivatives. [1] https://github.com/luvit/luvit https://github.com/luvit/luvit
ElhamAryanpur 11mo ago
Author of Astra here, loved seeing all the responses here. It wasn't planned to be anything beyond internal usage, but you are correct that I should have been more clear on the description and naming. In any case, it is far from production level. For those wondering, it is not a Lua implementation, rather wrapping over available Rust crates with Lua bindings and packaging everything into a single binary to be used. It is the way it is because our CI was spending a lot of time compiling our Rust servers, so this was made to speed up development for simple to mid complexity servers. And since then grew to have more functionality. Naming wise it is true that it is confusing with Astro and other similar naming projects I agree. Name suggestions are welcome!
- ElhamAryanpur 11mo ago
  I have created an issue https://github.com/ArkForgeLabs/Astra/issues/121 https://github.com/ArkForgeLabs/Astra/issues/121 to track all the arguments said here. Let me know if theres anything else I should look into. Thank you all for your feedback.

84 points by akagusu 11mo ago

andsoitis 11mo ago

100% of Lua?

vrighter 11mo ago
It's a runtime, not a lua interpreter/jit. The first sentence in its readme is the following: "Astra is a web server runtime for Lua (5.1-5.4), Luau and LuaJIT written in Rust with native support for Teal."
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- andsoitis 11mo ago
  > It's a runtime, not a lua interpreter/jit. Would you say the Lua interpreter is also a Lua runtime?
  - vrighter 11mo ago
    the lua interpreter by itself is similar in scope to freestanding c. You can do anything, but you have to do everything. Lua doesn't come with much. Just some very basic file io (not even including listing files). Stuff that embeds lua is supposed to provide a runtime for lua programs to actually interact with.
    - andsoitis 11mo ago
      > Lua doesn't come with much. Just some very basic file io (not even including listing files) Don’t most people simply use the LuaFileSystem library for that? https://github.com/lunarmodules/luafilesystem https://github.com/lunarmodules/luafilesystem I think you (and the project) are using “runtime” when what you really mean environment.
      - vrighter 11mo ago
        Yes most do. But that is not part of lua. That is just a library one can load. It's written in C. The lua interpreter does not allow any access to the outside world. That rudimentary "built-in" io that's included with lua? It's actually a library shipped with the interpreter, that you need to explicitly load in from the C side of things. Exiting with a process exit code? Optional library. String operations such as pattern matching? Optional library. Math? Optional library. Debugging? Optional library. If you didn't load any of these, then the only I/O you could do is to stdout with the print statement. When you instantiate a new lua state, you are expected to provide your own runtime. It's a language designed to be embedded in other software. Take, for example, libc. It's the C runtime. It doesn't compile or interpret C. libc is just a bunch of C code (with assembly sprinkled in, of course).
- debugnik 11mo ago
  The interpreter/jit has traditionally been considered part of a dynamic language runtime, arguably the major part, before JS-brained companies started to call their every repackaging of V8/JSC a runtime (which is technically correct but only considering part of them is off-the-shelf).

VWWHFSfQ 11mo ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like this is using the mlua Rust bindings (which are excellent). It's not a Lua runtime from-scratch in Rust. It's the regular C Lua/LuaJIT with a Rust interface.

vrighter 11mo ago
You're thinking of the interpreter, not the runtime. The runtime is libraries, not the interpreter. The async-io frameworks and stuff like that. Just like how node.js is a javascript runtime, it uses the V8 engine, and bun is also a javascript runtime that uses javascriptcore instead. Neither one of them wrote their own javascript interpreter.
- Lerc 11mo ago
  I think of the runtime as the whole execution stack. The interpreter, engine, JIT etc. is the back end. The interface to the world is a wrapper around that. I would describe this as a Lua wrapper written in Rust. That carries the clear indication that you should not expect the interpreter to be written in Rust. I would be (and indeed was) disappointed to see that this 'Lua runtime' did not have a Rust implementation of Lua. I would be much more interested in seeing that than a wrapper.
  - ElhamAryanpur 11mo ago
    You are correct on this, I should have been more clear about the description. When I wrote the description I was in the headspace of BunJS and Deno. I will make note of this and write a better README description.

joshlk 11mo ago

The top claim is that it's "Incredibly Fast" but I can't find any performance benchmarks. Can anyone find a link?

coderedart 11mo ago
It seems to just be re-exposing existing lua runtimes, which makes the naming very unfortunate IMO. The underlying runtime Luau, for example, details its performance here https://luau.org/performance https://luau.org/performance . Luajit is already popular and has plenty of benchmarks online.
- gpm 11mo ago
  I assume the relevant performance benchmarking would be of the http server APIs it exposes to lua, not lua itself.

nalekberov 11mo ago

[flagged]

phplovesong 11mo ago
This would be a best seller. HN without Rust and AI, thats the golden braid.
nalekberov 11mo ago
[flagged]
- Lerc 11mo ago
  Or it could be that you posted an insubstansive comment that added little to the conversation. I don't use Rust. I certainly don't advocate for it, but I don't mind seeing posts about things people have done in Rust. I also don't use Lisp or Forth. I'd be quite interested to see people posting new projects that do real world things with those. Seeing languages being used helps you see what tools are the right ones for the job.
  - nalekberov 11mo ago
    [flagged]
slightwinder 11mo ago
As I remember, you can just use ublock origin and some cosmetic filter with :has-text() or something.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
Aurornis 11mo ago
If you’re not interested, don’t click it. But please don’t come to the comment section and write multiple comments complaining about its existence.

bcardarella 11mo ago

"written in Rust" ok

phplovesong 11mo ago
[flagged]
- sensen 11mo ago
  I don't see any reference to `0xiDizEd` in the docs or on github. Are you sure that you're discussing the right project?

fullstop 11mo ago

I transpiled Lua into wasm so that I can run in a browser. It has very little practical purpose, but I thought that it was kind of cool. https://i.imgur.com/ErSNVoR.png https://i.imgur.com/ErSNVoR.png

nhatcher 11mo ago
I don't know I think it could be useful. I did this a while ago: https://github.com/nhatcher/ariana-lua https://github.com/nhatcher/ariana-lua But next time I think I would like to have a language that compiles in the browser to wasm

mwkaufma 11mo ago

Misleading use of the term "runtime" as it does not implement lua, but just links nonrust implementations into a webserver "runtime."

deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
creata 11mo ago
Yep. Specifically, the crate uses mlua: https://github.com/ArkForgeLabs/Astra/blob/f812bb0dc2881d74061b53178e05d9d76ec13790/Cargo.toml#L34-L42 https://github.com/ArkForgeLabs/Astra/blob/f812bb0dc2881d740...
gpm 11mo ago
That's exactly how the term runtime is consistently used in the JS world... not sure it's misleading at all. Certainly less exciting/ambitious than if the interpreter was also rewritten, but its what it says on the tin as I understand the words.
- pjmlp 11mo ago
  V8 and JSCore are a runtimes, everything else is made up stuff by people without background in compilers.
- nerdponx 11mo ago
  That's not at all what a runtime is, in any context, ever. Where else have you seen this solecism? It's new to me.
  - munificent 11mo ago
    First sentence of the Wikipedia article for Node.js: > Node.js is a cross-platform, open-source JavaScript runtime environment that can run on Windows, Linux, Unix, macOS, and more. First sentence for the Wikipedia article Deno: > Deno is a runtime for JavaScript, TypeScript, and WebAssembly that is based on the V8 JavaScript engine and the Rust programming language. First line of hero text from Node.js's site: > Node.js® is a free, open-source, cross-platform JavaScript runtime environment that lets developers create servers, web apps, command line tools and scripts. First line of hero text from Deno's site: > Deno is the open-source JavaScript runtime for the modern web.

benwilber0 11mo ago

Looks neat. I built a programmable server for Server-Sent Events using a similar stack (Rust/mlua/axum) [1]. I think the Rust/Lua interop story is pretty good. [1] https://github.com/benwilber/tinysse https://github.com/benwilber/tinysse

anentropic 11mo ago

Light-mode CSS is broken https://astra.arkforge.net/docs/latest/internals/structure.html https://astra.arkforge.net/docs/latest/internals/structure.h... (looks as if `code` words are redacted LOL)

ElhamAryanpur 11mo ago
Oh I missed that, thank you! Will open an issue for this

johnisgood 11mo ago

How does it compare to LuaJIT? LuaJIT is super performant, that I know.

ElhamAryanpur 11mo ago
It isn't a replacement for the LuaJIT. Rather a wrapper over it with Rust libraries being available for use. Batteries included essentially.
- johnisgood 11mo ago
  > Astra is a web server runtime for Lua (5.1-5.4), Luau and LuaJIT written in Rust with native support for Teal. Seems like it is a web server runime only? Hmm, the website is confusing because: https://astra.arkforge.net/docs/latest/std/serde.html https://astra.arkforge.net/docs/latest/std/serde.html Although even on https://astra.arkforge.net/docs/latest/std/crypto.html https://astra.arkforge.net/docs/latest/std/crypto.html it mentions it is for web servers. ("During development of your web servers [...]") So ultimately it indeed is for webservers, and the utilities are, too. > Rather a wrapper over it with Rust libraries being available for use. Batteries included essentially Any Rust libraries? Are there code snippets for random Rust libraries unrelated to webservers?
  - ElhamAryanpur 11mo ago
    I am stating it can be, and already is, used for other tasks, not just web servers. Although the server and networking cases were originally what it was built for and the plans were stay there. Not "any" Rust library, the idea is to not reinvent the already made libraries out there for the use cases of the standard library, and rather make an interop with Lua. I am not sure what would count as unrelated to webservers but there are file system, templating, database, cryptography (minimal at the moment), serialization and deserialization moudles, with upcoming compression, logging, testing, and more coming soon https://github.com/ArkForgeLabs/Astra/issues/114 https://github.com/ArkForgeLabs/Astra/issues/114
    - 11mo ago

csnover 11mo ago

As others have noted, this is not actually a Lua engine written in Rust. It is a wrapper over existing C/C++ implementations of Lua. There is, however, an actual Lua engine written in Rust. It is called piccolo.[0] [0] https://github.com/kyren/piccolo https://github.com/kyren/piccolo

znpy 11mo ago
Is this one of those things that claims to be fast purely by virtue of being written in rust?
- gpm 11mo ago
  Considering one of the project goals at the top of the readme is "Don't be obnoxiously slow" obviously not - it doesn't claim to be fast at all.
  - znpy 11mo ago
    the first line of text in the web page is literally "Blazingly-Fast Lua runtime"
    - gpm 11mo ago
      You responded to a post about https://github.com/kyren/piccolo https://github.com/kyren/piccolo, not to the top level post about an entirely different project. The word "blazingly" exists nowhere on piccolo's github page according to ctrl-f.

forgotpwd16 11mo ago

Not sure what this is. The homepage shows making an API in Lua. So is a web framework? In any case, a bad description term-wise. Being referred to as runtime made sense for Node & JS, since JS was until Node mostly confined to web browsers with Node setting it free giving native OS access, an event loop, and even a module system. Lua, Python, etc are already shipping as their own self-contained runtime. So calling a Lua, Python, etc wrapper in X as runtime written in X makes no sense.

benwilber0 11mo ago
The "runtime" word is very confusing in this case. It's a web application server written in Rust (Axum/Tokio), that has hooks into Lua bindings (mlua) so that application behaviors can be implemented in Lua.
ElhamAryanpur 11mo ago
While I agree it is not in the technical terms a runtime, the inspiration for it was from BunJS and Deno and such. Similar projects in the Lua space also name themselves as runtime, so I wrote runtime as well. It is not exclusively for web, although it started as that. Nowadays Astra has libraries for many general things, and are used in a wide range of projects, from scripting, CI/CD, API servers, and more. Lua does ship a runtime, although it is incredibly limited in standard library, and lacks a lot of features that other languages ship out of the box. I could have either made a library to be used with each Lua VM or package everything into a single binary which was what we needed for our use case anyways, and gave a lot of control for us as well. In any case, I agree that I should have been more clear in the description. It has not been updated since a while and the project moves very fast.

coderedart 11mo ago

The naming is definitely unfortunate, as I was briefly excited for a lua VM written in rust. Anyway, for those who want a lua version of nodejs/bun/deno, try looking at https://luvit.io/ https://luvit.io/ (lua) or https://lune-org.github.io/docs/ https://lune-org.github.io/docs/ (luau - AKA roblox lua).

brabel 11mo ago
If you want a Lua webserver, the way to go imo is Redbean. https://redbean.dev/ https://redbean.dev/ Based on CosmopolitanC with incredible performance and single binary runs on any platform. There is also MakoServer. https://makoserver.net/ https://makoserver.net/ More for embedded but runs in anything and also very batteries included, like Redbean including SQLite and JSON for example.
- kevinfiol 11mo ago
  Redbean is very fun. I built a mini Markdown-based CMS with it earlier this year: https://github.com/kevinfiol/beancms https://github.com/kevinfiol/beancms
johnisgood 11mo ago
I have used luvit and I can recommend. I used it for my Discord bot written in Lua.

Will-Reppeto 11mo ago

[dead]

pjmlp 11mo ago

Not to be missed up with Astra, a Wordpress plugin. https://wpastra.com/ https://wpastra.com/ Naming is hard.

ElhamAryanpur 11mo ago
hahaha it really is. Astro is another project that it also clashes with. When I was naming it, I was thinking of Warhammer's Astra Millitarum. But I forgot that it is a very popular name in general... my bad

james2doyle 11mo ago

There seems to be quite a few of projects like this these days: * https://github.com/Scythe-Technology/zune https://github.com/Scythe-Technology/zune * https://github.com/lune-org/lune https://github.com/lune-org/lune * https://github.com/luau-lang/lute https://github.com/luau-lang/lute * https://github.com/seal-runtime/seal https://github.com/seal-runtime/seal All slightly different. Personally, I like Lune and Zune. Have used both to play around and find them fun to use

kevinfiol 11mo ago
I think luvit [1] by Tim Caswell was the first one I saw that got me excited many years ago. I love to see passion for Lua/Lua derivatives. [1] https://github.com/luvit/luvit https://github.com/luvit/luvit

ElhamAryanpur 11mo ago

Author of Astra here, loved seeing all the responses here. It wasn't planned to be anything beyond internal usage, but you are correct that I should have been more clear on the description and naming. In any case, it is far from production level. For those wondering, it is not a Lua implementation, rather wrapping over available Rust crates with Lua bindings and packaging everything into a single binary to be used. It is the way it is because our CI was spending a lot of time compiling our Rust servers, so this was made to speed up development for simple to mid complexity servers. And since then grew to have more functionality. Naming wise it is true that it is confusing with Astro and other similar naming projects I agree. Name suggestions are welcome!

ElhamAryanpur 11mo ago
I have created an issue https://github.com/ArkForgeLabs/Astra/issues/121 https://github.com/ArkForgeLabs/Astra/issues/121 to track all the arguments said here. Let me know if theres anything else I should look into. Thank you all for your feedback.