luabundle v1.6.0

luabundle

A library for bundling several Lua files into a single file.

If you're after a CLI tool, please see luabundler, which utilises this library.

• Installation
• Usage

Installation

Install the node module with:

yarn add luabundle

or with NPM:

npm install --save luabundle

Usage

import bundle from 'luabundle'

const bundledLua = bundle('./file.lua')
// `bundledLua` now contains valid Lua which can be written straight to disk, stdout etc. 

If you're using TypeScript, TS definitions are available by default.

bundle(inputFilePath: string, options: Options) => string

Reads a Lua file, all recursively require()d modules, and returns the resultant bundle as a string.

bundleString(lua: string, options: Options) => string

Loads all modules require()d in the provided Lua string, and returns the resultant bundle as a string.

Options

RealizedOptions refers to Options after all default values have been merged i.e. identifiers is guaranteed to exist etc.

Module refers to an object of the form:

type Module = {
	name: string,
	resolvedPath?: string,
	content: string,
}

Search Paths

In order to know where to look for required files, Lua search path patterns are utilised.

In addition to allowing you to add directories to search within, the pattern format allows you to configure supported file extensions as well.

Files will be resolved relative these paths. If a specified path is itself relative, that path will be resolved relative to the current working directory.

The default behaviour (paths option omitted) is to resolve module names relative to the current working directory, considering files with a .lua extension or no extension at all.

Expression Handler

type ExpressionHandler = (module: Module, expression: Expression) => string | string[] | null | undefined | void

Expression is a luaparse expression.

_Module is as described above.

By default, luabundle can only resolve string literal requires. When a require() call is encountered that's some other expression e.g.

require(someVariable)

then luabundle cannot resolve this unassisted. require will simply be replaced with __bundle_require (or the value of options.identifiers.required), resulting in something like:

__bundle_require(someVariable)

This will work just fine at runtime if someVariable refers to a module that's in the bundle. However, luabundle doesn't know which modules it should add to bundle, and by default won't add any (for this require() call).

The simplest way to handle this situation is just to log a warning e.g.

import bundle from 'luabundle'

const bundledLua = bundle('./file.lua', {
    expressionHandler: (module, expression) => {
        const start = expression.loc.start
        console.warn(`WARNING: Non-literal require found in '${module.name}' at ${start.line}:${start.column}`)
    },
})

However, if you know at bundle time a list of modules that you want to include for dynamic requires you can do something like:

import bundle from 'luabundle'

const bundledLua = bundle('./file.lua', {
    expressionHandler: () => ['moduleA', 'moduleB'],
})

In this case the generated __bundle_require() won't be altered, however luabundle will simply resolve moduleA and moduleB, and ensure they're included in the bundle.

Alternatively, if a module name is returned as a string (not a string[]), luabundle will substitute out the dynamic expression for a string literal, resolve the module, and ensure it's included in the bundle.

Identifiers

This is an advanced feature. Under normal use you shouldn't need to worry about any of this.

type Identifiers = {
	register: string,
	require: string,
	loaded: string,
	modules: string,
}

Generated bundles contain a few local scoped identifiers which are accessible as upvalues throughout the entire bundle (i.e. in every module).

Most importantly, require calls in all bundled modules have been replaced with calls to our bundle's require implementation, by default it's called __bundle_require.

If at runtime you want to get a list of all modules included in the bundle, you can iterate through the keys in "modules table", by default accessible as __bundle_modules.