This repository provides a working skeleton that you can use as a base to build and share your own native plugins. Clone this repository, make any necessary changes and publish it to a GitHub repository of your own. Make sure to enable GitHub Actions, then go to Actions -> Release and hit: Run workflow to let GitHub build a binary for you.

Some of the files that you will find on this repo are:

• manifest.json - Used by lpm (the Lite XL package manager) for automated installation.
• .github/workflows/release.yml - Commands to let GitHub Actions automatically build a binary.
• changelog.md - Read by GitHub Actions to make a release, always a good idea to keep this updated.
• lite_xl_plugin_api.h - Used to import Lua symbols directly from the running Lite XL instance. Latest version of this file is found on https://github.com/lite-xl/lite-xl/blob/master/resources/lite_xl_plugin_api.h

You will need to have meson and a working build environment for your operating system. Then, to build just execute the following commands:

meson setup build
meson compile -C build

(Not Recommended) If you do not want to use the same Lua linked to Lite XL, use -Duse_lua=enabled. This will link with the system lua skipping the use of lite_xl_plugin_api.h header and not importing the required symbols directly from Lite XL:

meson setup -Duse_lua=enabled build

Notice: the subprojects directory contains a lua and luajit meson wraps. These are used in case you decide to not depend on lite_xl_plugin_api.h for lua symbols importing, and your system does not has the targeted lua runtime installed. In this case it will download the runtime, compile it and statically link to it. Also you can force using the meson wraps by using the flag --wrap-mode forcefallback:

meson setup --wrap-mode forcefallback build

Also you can try and link against LuaJIT for testing purposes by adding -Djit=true:

meson setup -Djit=true build

To install just copy the generated native library file to your plugins directory:

mkdir -p ~/.config/lite-xl/plugins/sample
cp build/native.so ~/.config/lite-xl/plugins/sample/

Then install the Lua part of the plugin:

cp init.lua ~/.config/lite-xl/plugins/sample/