Voitelua

Voitelua is a lightweight, Lua-inspired scripting language intended for embedding in applications such as games, tools, and edge devices. It emphasizes a small runtime, predictable performance, and straightforward interoperability with C.

It originated as a community project in the early 2020s, designed to extend Lua-like syntax with explicit typing options and a modular package system. The language aims to provide an approachable transition path for Lua developers while offering features common in modern scripting languages.

Features include a Lua-compatible syntax, a simple module system, optional static typing via type annotations, first-class functions, coroutines, and an interface for C interop through a foreign function interface. The runtime is designed for small memory footprints and predictable startup times, with optional just-in-time or ahead-of-time compilation paths depending on build configuration.

Example snippet:

function greet(name)

return "Hello, " .. name

end

local msg = greet("Voitelua")

print(msg)

Ecosystem and use cases: Voitelua has seen adoption in indie game projects and IoT prototypes where Lua was previously used, and it provides bindings to graphics libraries and hardware APIs through its package manager. Tooling includes an editor integration, unit testing framework, and a standard library with file I/O, math, and string manipulation.

Reception and future: Critics cite simplicity and ease of embedding, while others note a limited ecosystem size compared to Lua or LuaJIT. Ongoing work focuses on improving type safety, expanding platform support, and refining the standard library.