Recommendations for a Lua IDE and debugger on Windows

Question

What is the IDE commonly used on Windows for Lua development?(I am using Netbeans and I am ready to switch).

Has anybody used LuaEclipse? Would you recommend the LuaEclipse debugger?

Solution 1

You might consider using IntelliJ's Lua plugin (Disclaimer: I am the author).

You can read about the features here:

https://bitbucket.org/sylvanaar2/lua-for-idea/wiki/Home

There are also lots of pictures and screencasts so you can get a feel for things without much effort.

IntelliJ Community Edition and the Lua plugin are both free.

Solution 2

You may want to try ZeroBrane Studio IDE, which includes a remote debugger and integrates with Love2d, Moai, and other Lua engines.

(These details are used to be in this SO answer, but the question has since been deleted, so I moved some of the information here.)

• Lua IDE, written in Lua; simple and lightweight
• Syntax highlighting and code folding
• Auto-completion for functions and keywords
• Interactive console to directly test code snippets with local and remote execution
• Integrated debugger (with support for local and remote debugging)
• Integrated static analyzer
• Unique live coding feature (demo)
• Love2d auto-completion, debugging, and live coding
• Moai integration, debugging, and live coding
• Gideros Mobile debugging and live coding
• OpenResty/Nginx Lua script debugging
• Adobe Lightroom Lua plugin debugging
• On-device debugging for Corona SDK and Gideros Mobile
• Integrated markdown formatting for providing lessons and instructions
• No install required; runs from any folder
• Open-source (MIT license)
• Windows, Mac, and Linux

Solution 3

LuaEdit is the a reasonable IDE which offers built-in lua debugging. Other options mentioned above (VSLua, vim, Scite) just give you syntax highlighing and editing options and needs to be combined with an external debugger.

Solution 4

The Zeus IDE has support for Lua. It does the standard syntax highlighting, code folding, class browsing, code templates etc.

Zeus is also fully scriptable and it is also possible to write Zeus macros in Lua.

Solution 5

Scite is a pretty solid editor and has popup help for Lua library functions, in addition to code completion. If you're working on a C/C++ program with Lua embedded in it, you may also want to try editing Lua files directly in VS using the VSLua extension. It just does syntax highlighting, but it's nice not to have to flip between programs when editing files (assuming your other monitors, if you have them, are displaying something else important).

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Comments

[Harish Shetty]

I just installed the plugin and looks very promising. Thank you and congratulations for building such a useful plugin.

[Harish Shetty]

+1, I tried to use the Eclipse Lua plugin in 2010 and gave up. This version looks promising.

[Ravi Yadav]

I have installed the plugin... and performed the setup .. and set up the world of warcraft as a external library...but what i need is suppose I need Lightroom classes(from lightroom sdk) then I need it when i press alt +enter..just like in Android Studio..but here its not possible....so can u please guide How I can add the lightroom sdk same as we do in Android Studio

[Manu Evans]

Will it work with a 64bit host binary? All the other debuggers seem to fail at this basic, basic requirement. Who builds 32bit apps anymore?

[aganm]

Do you have linting and autocompletion?