A developer built a Lua compiler that turns scripts into native executables without a Lua VM

Trials and Tribulations of Native Lua Compilation

After years of embedding Lua, the author of clx wanted to go beyond packaging a VM inside an executable. clx parses Lua 5.5, generates C++, and compiles it with Clang, GCC, or MSVC, producing native code backed by a purpose-built runtime for tables, strings, GC, and coroutines. Modules, native C++ bindings, and static libraries all work, with an optional --dynamic mode for runtime-loaded scripts. The hard part wasn't code generation but preserving Lua's semantics.