λ61

A Lua-powered environment for building, scripting, and experimenting.

λ61 (aka l61) is a hyper-extensible Lua-based environment.
This is a full rewrite — the original attempt grew into spaghetti with scope creep, so this version is built to be leaner, cleaner, and actually maintainable.

Purpose

Originally conceived as a build system, λ61 has evolved into a hyper-extensible environment layered on top of liblua.
Think of it as a foundation you can shape into whatever workflow you need, with Lua as the extension language.

Dependencies

• Runtime
  • GCC or Clang (New enough to compile C++23)
  • Boost.Program_options (For The Standard Front End)
  • Google's Abseil
  • liblua
  • readline
• Build
  • CMake
  • Ninja or Make
  • Bash
  • pkgconfig aka pkgconf
  • GoogleTest (for testing)
• Bundled Libraries
  • sol2
  • nlohmann's json

Status

Work in progress — expect breaking changes, missing features, and rough edges. Contributions, ideas, and experiments are welcome.

Getting Started

git clone https://github.com/tetex7/l61.git # Clone the project to your local machine
cd ./l61 # Changes your current working directory to the project
 
./dev_setup.sh # Initializes the Cmake environment
./dev_setup.sh mk # Builds the project
./package.sh # Packages the project into a portable usable File structure
 
./l61-deployment-package/bin/l61 --help

FreeBSD is a little different

And since freeBSD packages Lua with its version name I use -DL61_CONFIG_LUA_PACKAGE_NAME="lua-X.X"
One small note clang is used on FreeBSD

git clone https://github.com/tetex7/l61.git # Clone the project to your local machine
cd ./l61 # Changes your current working directory to the project
 
./dev_setup.sh -DL61_CONFIG_LUA_PACKAGE_NAME="lua-5.4"
./dev_setup.sh mk 
 
./package.sh # Packages the project into a portable usable File structure
 
./l61-deployment-package/bin/l61 --help

I have not tested it on OpenBSD yet

Why λ61?

λ61 isn’t just another Lua wrapper or a Runtime.
It’s designed to be hyper-extensible, letting you mold it into the workflow you want
from scripting and building to prototyping complex systems
all while staying lightweight and maintainable.