Question

We had a freelance developer that went rogue and now I’m left with a Lua-based app with no build files.

I have a degree in computer science, but have no experience with Lua, so I’m wondering how I can compile this (or any Lua app) with XCode for iOS.

It’s a fairly simple app. It appears as though it loads in images for navigation and displays other images as content.

How do I tell XCode to compile Lua for iOS though? I have all the files in XCode and it’s compiling, but clearly its ignoring the .lua files and compiling the application shell.

I have Lua downloaded by source and also installed it via MacPorts. I read that I need to link lua.h and luac.h but I don’t see how to add it as a build target.

Any advise or direction would be much appreciated.

These are the files I have:

Source Code/
    build.settings
    Clinical_Data/
        page4a_2_Anim.lua
        page4a_3_Anim.lua
        page4a_4_Anim.lua
        page4a_5_Anim.lua
        page4b_2_Anim.lua
        page4b_3_Anim.lua
        page4b_4_Anim.lua
        page4d_2_Anim.lua
        page4d_3_Anim.lua
        page4d_4_Anim.lua
    config.lua
    home.lua
    Icon-72.png
    images/
        <*.png files>
    main.lua
    manifests/
        CaseStudy.manifest.txt
        ClinicalData.manifest.txt
        Experience.manifest.txt
        Home.manifest.txt
        NavElements.manifest.txt
        Pathology.manifest.txt
        References.manifest.txt
        Restasis.manifest.txt
    menu.lua
    page4a_2_Anim.lua
    page4a_3_Anim.lua
    page4a_4_Anim.lua
    page4a_5_Anim.lua
    page4b_2_Anim.lua
    page4b_3_Anim.lua
    page4b_4_Anim.lua
    page4d_2_Anim.lua
    page4d_3_Anim.lua
    page4d_4_Anim.lua
    parser.lua
    pdfs/
        <*.pdf files>
    section.lua
    slide.lua
    slideView.lua
    ui.lua

Answer 1

It’s probably linking lua from your installed lua code. There’ll be a -llua in your link code. Somewhere in your source files there’ll be a

luaL_loadfile(L, file);

command. This loads the lua file.

If it’s corona it might have a different way to load – haven’t used it.

If you need an IDE http://www.eclipse.org/koneki/ldt/ is superb. You can remote debug your app very easily.