Skip to contents

Changelog

Source: NEWS.md

luajr 0.3.1

  • Bug fixes: potential memory bugs unearthed by Address Sanitizer and UB Sanitizer; correct loading R API entry points in R.lua on Fedora.

luajr 0.3.0

CRAN release: 2026-06-02

  • Overhauled the args code system in lua_func() for richer capabilities. This breaks compatibility with previous versions of luajr.

  • Added new vignettes on benchmarks and the R.lua module and reorganised vignettes.

  • Overhauled representation of atomic vectors and lists within luajr. There is no longer a separate type for vectors passed by reference (but passing by reference is still supported).

  • Removed lua_parallel(), replacing it with a new parallel processing system that runs entirely within Lua.

  • Added native support for R functions, environments, and generic SEXP variables in Lua.

  • Added a new ‘R’ module which can be used in Lua code to access R’s API.

  • luajr is now officially compatible (and tested) with R versions 4.0.0 and up.

  • Improved efficiency of calls into Lua functions from R.

  • Fixed some bugs in running long Lua strings and when passing / returning certain LuaJIT cdata types.

luajr 0.2.2

CRAN release: 2026-02-16

  • Updated LuaJIT to incorporate a key bugfix that would otherwise lead to severe performance regressions on ARM64 (including recent Mac computers).

luajr 0.2.1

CRAN release: 2026-02-15

  • luajr’s profiler has been overhauled to capture more complete profiling data in a data.frame. As a result, the format of the object returned by lua_profile() has changed.

  • luajr now supports long vectors (i.e. vectors with 2^31 elements or more). You should pass these into Lua using the 'r' arg code for efficiency. Further details may be found in vignette("objects"). This addresses issue #5. Thanks to @waynelapierre for asking about long vectors!

luajr 0.2.0

CRAN release: 2025-09-08

  • Added support for Lua modules using lua_module() and lua_import(). This simplifies the process of adding Lua code to your R package, which is now explained in a new vignette. This addresses issue #4. Thanks to @al-obrien for asking about this!

  • Added a speed comparison for luajr / Lua versus Rcpp / C++.

  • lua_func() can now accept an external pointer to a Lua function.

luajr 0.1.9

CRAN release: 2025-04-30

  • Added debugging and profiling for Lua code. The debugger is Scott Lembcke’s debugger.lua, and the profiler is LuaJIT’s built-in sampling profiler. Also added the option of turning off JIT compilation. This is all accessed through a new function, lua_mode().

  • Added further code to ensure that LuaJIT never calls exit() directly and never tries to read from or write to standard input or output streams, instead redirecting this to the R console.

luajr 0.1.8

CRAN release: 2024-07-01

  • The Lua “io” library is now capable of getting input from the R console (e.g. with io.read()) – previously, trying this would cause R to hang (at least from RStudio).

  • The Lua os.exit() function now ends Lua execution without crashing RStudio.

  • lua_shell() now stores commands in the R console history.

  • The luajr build process now skips making libluajit.so and the luajit executable, as these are not needed for luajr.

  • Corrected an oversight in the documentation for lua_shell(); this fixes issue #3. Thanks to @SugarRayLua for bringing my attention to this!

  • Addressed some further issues turned up by CRAN checks.

luajr 0.1.7

CRAN release: 2024-04-24

  • Added support for passing the R type “raw” to Lua, as a string potentially with embedded nulls, and for returning strings with embedded nulls from Lua, which become “raw”s in R.

  • Replaced calls to Rf_allocVector3 with calls to Rf_allocVector, as the former is apparently not part of the API allowed in CRAN packages, as requested by CRAN.

  • @TimTaylor improved the R version of the “logistic map” example and benchmark in the main luajr vignette, so that now the R version is only 10x slower than the Lua version, not 2,500x slower. This fixes issue #2. Thanks Tim!

  • Removed a compiler flag, -Wformat, that was causing errors with some standard R environments, most notably the rocker/r-base Docker environment. This fixes issue #1. Thanks @jonocarroll for reporting and helping to fix luajr’s first official bug! :-)

luajr 0.1.6

CRAN release: 2024-02-23

  • This version makes further changes to DESCRIPTION and LICENSE requested by CRAN.

luajr 0.1.5

  • This version updates the package DESCRIPTION and CITATION to better reflect Mike Pall’s role as author of the embedded LuaJIT compiler.

luajr 0.1.4

  • Added luajr.NULL, to allow working with NULL in Lua.
  • Fixed some problems for CRAN.

luajr 0.1.3

  • Added a vignette describing the luajr Lua module.
  • Added lua_parallel() for basic multithreading.
  • Fixed compilation warnings about enums on some platforms.

luajr 0.1.2

CRAN release: 2024-01-27

  • luajr is now on CRAN!