LuaTier

A fully rewritten modern Lua runtime supporting Lua 5.3+, featuring tiered hybrid execution: bytecode interpreter, offline AOT compiler, and optional tracing JIT.

Built in C++17 from scratch — not derived from historical LuaJIT. See PROPOSAL.md and docs/ROADMAP.md.

Build

cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug
cmake --build build
ctest --test-dir build --output-on-failure

Run

./build/luatier -v
./build/luatier -e "print(1+2)"

Layout

• docs/spec/ — frozen architecture contracts
• src/frontend/ — lexer, parser, AST, sema, LBC lowering
• src/vm/ — bytecode, interpreter, state, builtins
• src/runtime/ — TValue, string, table, closure, upvalue
• src/gc/ — incremental mark-sweep
• src/jit/ — hotness, IC, baseline/opt/deopt scaffolding
• src/api/ — Lua-compatible C API
• tests/ — unit + differential oracle tests

Benchmarks

cmake --build build --config Release --target luatier_cli
.\scripts\run_bench.ps1   # vs Lua 5.3.6; writes docs/bench-report.md

See bench/README.md.

Stress env

• LUATIER_STRESS_GC_EVERY_SAFEPOINT=1
• LUATIER_STRESS_FORCE_DEOPT=1
• LUATIER_STRESS_DISABLE_IC=1
• LUATIER_JIT_LOG=1