Luabind is a library that helps you create bindings between C++ and Lua. It has the ability to expose functions and classes, written in C++, to Lua. It will also supply the functionality to define classes in Lua and let them derive from other Lua classes or C++ classes. Lua classes can override virtual functions from their C++ base classes. It is written towards Lua 5.2 but should also work with 5.1.
It is implemented utilizing template meta programming. That means that you don’t need an extra preprocess pass to compile your project (it is done by the compiler). It also means you don’t (usually) have to know the exact signature of each function you register, since the library will generate code depending on the compile-time type of the function (which includes the signature). The main drawback of this approach is that the compilation time will increase for the file that does the registration, it is therefore recommended that you register everything in the same cpp-file.
Luabind is released under the terms of the MIT license.
We are very interested in hearing about projects that use luabind, please let us know about your project.
The main channel for help and feedback is the luabind mailing list. There’s also an IRC channel #luabind on irc.freenode.net.
Additionally, this fork’s github issue tracker can also be used for bug reports, feature requests and questions.
Luabind supports:
- Overloaded free functions
- C++ classes in Lua
- Overloaded member functions
- Operators
- Properties
- Enums (also C++11 enum class if available)
- Lua functions in C++
- Lua classes in C++
- Lua classes (single inheritance)
- Derives from Lua or C++ classes
- Override virtual functions from C++ classes
- Implicit casts between registered types
- Best match signature matching
- Return value policies and parameter policies
Luabind is currently tested regularly with
- Microsoft Visual C++ 11 (2012) x32 and x64
- gcc 4.8 x64 (with and without -std=c++11)
- Clang 3.2 x64 (with and without -std=c++11)
It should work with any compiler conformant with C++03. However, probably only versions of the above threecompilers will work out of the box with the provided CMake build files. Please report any issues you have to the github issue tracker.