LuaJIT

LuaJIT is a tracing just-in-time compiler and interpreter for the Lua programming language.

The LuaJIT project was started in 2005 by developer Mike Pall, released under the MIT open source license.

The second major release of the compiler, 2.0.0, featured major performance increases.

LuaJIT uses rolling releases. Mike Pall, the creator and maintainer recommends using the tip of the v2.1 branch, and does not believe in releases.

Mike Pall resigned in 2015 making only occasional patching to the future 2.1 version since then.

LuaJIT is often the fastest Lua runtime. LuaJIT has also been named the fastest implementation of a dynamic programming language.

LuaJIT includes a Foreign Function Interface compatible with C data structures. Its use is encouraged for numerical computation.

LuaJIT is a tracing just-in-time compiler. LuaJIT chooses loops and function calls as trace anchors to begin recording possible hot paths. Function calls will require twice as many invocations to begin recording as a loop. Once LuaJIT begins recording, all control flow, including jumps and calls, are inlined to form a linear trace. All executed bytecode instructions are stored and incrementally converted into LuaJIT's static single-assignment intermediate representation. LuaJIT's trace compiler is often capable of inlining and removing dispatches from object orientation, operators, and type modifications.