Lua Environment Setup Action

step-security/gh-actions-lua

Note: Requires version 8 or higher due to GitHub Actions core library updates.

Compiles and configures Lua runtime in the .lua/ directory within your workspace. Automatically adds .lua/bin to the system PATH for direct lua command access.

Usage

Basic Lua installation: (Defaults to latest stable release, currently 5.4.7)

- uses: step-security/gh-actions-lua@v12

Specify Lua version:

- uses: step-security/gh-actions-lua@v12
  with:
    luaVersion: "5.1.5"

Install LuaJIT variant:

- uses: step-security/gh-actions-lua@v12
  with:
    luaVersion: "luajit-2.1.0-beta3"

For Windows environments, include the MSVC development tools setup: ilammy/msvc-dev-cmd@v1. This is safe to include on all platforms.

- uses: ilammy/msvc-dev-cmd@v1
- uses: step-security/gh-actions-lua@v12

Configuration Options

luaVersion

Default: "5.4"

Determines which Lua version to build and install.

Supported versions:

• "5.1.5"
• "5.2.4"
• "5.3.6"
• "5.4.7"
• "luajit-2.0"
• "luajit-2.1"
• "luajit-master"
• "luajit-openresty"

Source locations:

• luajit-openresty — Downloads from https://github.com/openresty/luajit2 (master branch)
• luajit-* variants — Downloads from https://github.com/luajit/luajit (respective branches)
• Standard versions — Downloads from https://www.lua.org/ftp/

Quick aliases

Use shorthand versions: 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, luajit to get the latest patch version.

luaCompileFlags

Default: ""

Custom compilation options passed to the build system.

Usage example:

- uses: step-security/gh-actions-lua@v12
  with:
    luaVersion: 5.3
    luaCompileFlags: LUA_CFLAGS="-DLUA_INT_TYPE=LUA_INT_INT"

Compilation flags may behave differently between Lua and LuaJIT builds.

Complete Workflow Example

Testing a Lua project with LuaRocks dependencies and busted test framework.

Create .github/workflows/test.yml:

name: test

on: [push]

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v5

    - uses: step-security/gh-actions-lua@v12
      with:
        luaVersion: "5.1.5"

    - uses: leafo/gh-actions-luarocks@v4

    - name: build
      run: |
        luarocks install busted
        luarocks make

    - name: test
      run: |
        busted -o utfTerminal

This workflow:

• Installs Lua 5.1.5 — Change luaVersion for different versions or use luajit-* for LuaJIT
• Uses .rockspec from repository root for dependency management via luarocks make

Multi-Version Testing

Test across multiple Lua versions using matrix builds:

jobs:
  test:
    strategy:
      matrix:
        luaVersion: ["5.1.5", "5.2.4", "luajit-2.1.0-beta3"]

    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v5
    - uses: step-security/gh-actions-lua@v12
      with:
        luaVersion: ${{ matrix.luaVersion }}

    # additional steps...