Question

I am attempting to embed lua code in C++, and I’m getting a strange compiler error. Here’s my code:

#include <stdio.h>
extern "C" {
#include <lua.h>
#include <lauxlib.h>
#include <lualib.h>
}

int main() {
    lua_State *luaVM = luaL_newstate();
    if (luaVM == NULL) {
        printf("Error initializing lua!\n");
        return -1;
    }

    luaL_openlibs(luaVM);

    luaL_dofile(luaVM, "test.lua");

    lua_close(luaVM);

    return 0;
}

compiled with:

g++ -Wall -o embed -llua embed.cpp

and the error is:

g++ -Wall -o embed -llua embed.cpp
/tmp/ccMGuzal.o: In function `main':
embed.cpp:(.text+0x47): undefined reference to `luaL_loadfilex'
embed.cpp:(.text+0x72): undefined reference to `lua_pcallk'
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status

I am not calling luaL_loadfilex or lua_pcallk from my code, which lends itself to the assumption that the problem is not in my code, but in lua itself. does anyone have any ideas here?

UPDATE

Here is my version info:

$ lua -v
Lua 5.2.0  Copyright (C) 1994-2011 Lua.org, PUC-Rio

Answer 1

Ultimately the problem was that the libraries are named differently by version. When installed from the repository, the libraries are called liblua5.x and liblualib5.x, and therefore the following command was required:

g++ -Wall -o embed embed.cpp -llua5.2 -llualib5.2