Awesome Lua 
Inspired by the lists awesome, awesome-awesomeness, and awesome-nodejs.
Packages
- Implementations, Interpreters, and Bindings
- Package Managers
- Build Tools and Standalone Makers
- Debugging and Profiling
- IDEs and Plugins
- Utility Belts
- Game Engines
- Game Development
- Logging
- Web/Networking Platforms
- OpenResty
- Command-line Utilities
- Concurrency and Multithreading
- Templating
- Documentation
- Object-oriented Programming
- File system and OS
- Time and Date
- Image Manipulation
- Digital Signal Processing
- Hardware and Embedded Systems
- Math and Scientific Computing
- Parsing and Serialization
- Humanize
- Compression
- Cryptography
- Network
- Data Stores
- Message Brokers
- Testing
- Foreign Function Interfaces
- Analysis Tools and ASTs
- Experimental, etc
- Scriptable by Lua
- Miscellaneous
Resources
Implementations, Interpreters, and Bindings
- Lua - Lua's original ANSI C interpreter.
- Lua Repo - The official Lua repo, as seen by the Lua team, mirrored to GitHub.
- LuaJIT - High-performance Just-In-Time compiler for Lua.
- LLVM-Lua - Compiles Lua to LLVM.
- lua.vm.js - Lua VM on the web; a direct port of the C interpreter via LLVM, emscripten, and asm.js.
- Moonshine - A Lua VM implemented in JavaScript. Slower than lua.vm.js, but with better docs, examples, and JS interfacing.
- Fengari - The Lua VM rewritten in Javascript with seamless JS and DOM interoperability.
- MoonSharp - A Lua interpreter written entirely in C# for the .NET, Mono and Unity platforms.
- UniLua - A pure C# implementation of Lua 5.2, focused on compatibility with the Unity game engine.
- lupa - Python bindings to LuaJIT2.
- golua - Golang bindings to the Lua C API.
- GopherLua - Lua 5.1 VM and compiler implemented in Go with Go APIs.
- LuaBridge - A lightweight library for mapping data, functions, and classes back and forth between C++ and Lua.
Note: From LuaJIT to Lua to lua.vm.js to Moonshine, a basic benchmark sees performance drop by roughly a factor of 6 with each hop.
Package Managers
- LuaRocks - De-facto tool for installing Lua modules as packages called "rocks", plus public rock repository and website. Much like npm or pip.
Build Tools and Standalone Makers
- Lake - A build engine written in Lua, similar to Ruby's rake.
- Luabuild - Highly customizable Lua 5.2 build system.
- luastatic - Simple tool for turning Lua programs into standalone executables.
- omnia - A batteries-included creator of standalone executables, built on top of luastatic.
Debugging and Profiling
- ProFi - Simple profiler that works with LuaJIT and produces a report file.
- luatrace - Toolset for tracing/analyzing/profiling script execution and generating detailed reports.
- StackTracePlus - Drop-in upgrade to Lua's stack traces which adds local context and improves readability.
- MobDebug - Powerful remote debugger with breakpoints and stack inspection. Used by ZeroBraneStudio.