pallene

Note that some of those can't run on a regular Lua runtime. Luau is a separate implementation of a Lua dialect. However, it's backed by Roblox and being increasingly used in high budget games such as Alan Wake 2, and tools like Rive. And Terra is more of a low-level language embedded in regular Lua for metaprogramming, than a statically-typed Lua. In this vein there's also Pallene, which integrates better with regular Lua on a slightly-patched Lua runtime. https://github.com/pallene-lang/pallene (BTW the links for Nelua and Luau repos got mixed.)

Wait, Pallene just compiles to C using whatever local C compiler? https://github.com/pallene-lang/pallene/blob/master/src/pall... Well that's kinda disappointing. I expected something more in 2025, like directly generating asm like a lot of languages are starting to do. And your article makes it ambiguous whether it's from the Lua authors or grad students. I assume it started out just the students and then the Lua authors joined in?

Docs https://github.com/pallene-lang/pallene/blob/master/doc/manu... Looks similar to Teal. This is relatively exciting. Also, called it! Disappointed that it maintains syntactic Lua compatibility. Would have been a good time for a clean slate on the shoulders of hindsight.

This is the goal of the Pallene project: https://github.com/pallene-lang/pallene

It would have been nice if LuaX was written in Lua. Forking Pallene (https://github.com/pallene-lang/pallene) would introduce: - Types - LuaX -> Lua - LuaX -> C

In the Lua world, there's a project, Pallene[1], that aims to solve this problem in paricular[2]. [1]: https://github.com/pallene-lang/pallene [2]: http://www.inf.puc-rio.br/~roberto/docs/pallene-sblp.pdf

For those interested in using Lua or a similar syntax I curated a list of typed Lua-related projects: - https://luau-lang.org (Lua derivative, interpreted / sandboxed, from Roblox) - https://terralang.org (Lua JIT compiler) - https://nelua.io (Lua-syntax -> C compiler (WASM too w/ Emscripten) - https://github.com/pallene-lang/pallene (Lua AOT compiler) - https://github.com/teal-language/tl (Teal -> Lua compiler) - https://typescripttolua.github.io/ (TS -> Lua compiler) - https://github.com/sumneko/lua-language-server (IDE only typing) With minimum effort you can get a lot of benefit from using Sumneko's Lua language server in VSCode for near many Lua versions (LuaJIT, PUC-Rio Lua, etc.) All of the projects serve different purposes, whether you need/love Lua for speed (JIT, for games), low memory usage (AOT, for embedded), or simplicity (a

Terra and Nelua are both very different in goals than Teal. Teal is literally gradual types integrated into Lua keeping as many of Lua's idioms as possible (to a fault[1]). Terra and Nelua are both very metaprogrammable systems programming languages. Nelua's goals are primarily to soften C's rough edges, comparable to something like Nim. There's another one you missed in Pallene[2]. But again, it's goal was to optimize the stack sharing involved in using the C API. It also adds types though and maintains Lua idioms as much as possible. [1]: https://github.com/teal-language/tl/discussions/339 [2]: https://github.com/pallene-lang/pallene

That was somewhat of an entertaining read. > Terra is C if you replaced the preprocessor with Lua. This is what is written on the tin. PUC made there own version of Terra Pallene http://www.inf.puc-rio.br/~roberto/docs/Gualandi-2020-SCP.pd... https://github.com/pallene-lang/pallene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3inzGGFefg This is a good writeup on all the Alt-Luas https://injuly.in/blog/gsoc/

I want to like Teal, but the lack of nil checks[1] is a pretty big sacrifice in the name of "staying true to Lua idioms". >>> Every type in Teal accepts nil as a valid value, even if, like in Lua, attempting to use it with some operations would cause a runtime error, so be aware! I know you can use (or implement your own in about 8 lines) strict.lua[2], but that just seems like such a shame to omit nil checks from a gradual type system. I still follow the project, but I put a little more hope in Pallene's[3] development, although the aims are slightly different. [1]: https://github.com/teal-language/tl/blob/master/docs/tutoria... [2]: https://www.lua.org/extras/5.1/strict.lua [3]: https://github.com/pallene-lang/pallene

Odd to suggest that if they're interested in Lua, that they should check out Moonscript which is a different language altogether (although it compiles to Lua). But if you insist, something a little more Lua-ish is Teal[1] (gradual types ala TypeScript) or Pallene[2] (companion typed subset of Lua meant to generate optimized C libraries for use with Lua). [1]: https://github.com/teal-language/tl [2]: https://github.com/pallene-lang/pallene

That's what one should assume, but apparently this is not the case. Here is some more information: https://github.com/pallene-lang/pallene/issues/331.

This is the Pallene repo: https://github.com/pallene-lang/pallene