Visual Studio Lua Plugin!

[Matrixmage]

Hello!

So I've found a Lua plugin for VS that adds intellisense, debugging, file management, syntax highlighting, and a few other random things here and there. By default the plugin was made to only work for the Pro and Premium versions of VS, but because the project is open source and under the MIT license I did a quick hack so that it can work with all the versions, and now I'm sharing it here for you all to use!

The plugin is called BabeLua and unfortunately doesn't have the greatest quick start guide, so I'm going do a little crash course here on how to set it up.

Quick Start Guide

First things first, make sure you have VS. Microsoft has released a free version of VS 2013 called Visual Studio Community 2013 that seemingly has all the features of the paid version, and only has restrictions for large companies that utilize it. Download from the linked Microsoft site and then install it.

Next, download my modified version of BabeLua that'll work, you guessed it, on any version of VS. Once you've downloaded the file, double click on it and you'll get a little installer pop up. Go through with the installer and you'll have it done in no time.

Now that it's installed, you need to create your project. Barring any startup or welcome message, you should see the VS interface with a number of large header buttons along the top. One such button says "LUA". Clicking said button will bring up the menu related to the plugin. With the menu open, click on the button that says "New Lua Project". You'll now have a white box with three file location fields and two text entry fields. Personally, I'd reccommend making a folder for all your projects, and then a folder for each specific project you work on.

Assuming you've made a folder for your current project, click on the browse button for the "Lua scripts folder" field and navigate to your projects folder. Once in the folder, click the "New Folder" button on the bottom and create another new folder, I personally name mine "Scripts Folder". Now that you've made your scripts folder inside your current project folder inside your overall projects folder, you want to choose your scripts folder to serve as, you guessed it, your scripts folder.

Now that you have the scripts folder selected, you need to select your Lua installation. For this you need to go download the Lua binaries, or compile them yourself. Once you've downloaded the Lua installer and started it, you should see a pretty standard install window pop up. As you would normally, go through the installer, leaving all the settings at default, and taking note of the install location. Now that Lua is installed you simply click the browse button for the "Lua exe path" field and browse to the exe inside the noted install location (default is C:\Program Files (x86)\Lua\5.1\lua.exe).

Now you should notice that the "Working path" field has automatically been filled in, you want to leave this as it is. The fourth field is "Command line" which you want to leave empty unless you know what you're doing. The final field is "Lua project name" which you want name after your project, usually your mod in this case.

Now that all the fields are filled (except for the fourth one!) just press the "ok" button. Congratulations! You're ready to start coding Lua the VS way!

Quick guide for people who know what they're doing

Super Quick Knowledgeable Guide

Download my modified BabeLua plugin and install it.

Download the Lua binaries.

Create a new Lua project (under the new Lua header at the top) and make the scripts folder be the folder where you put your Lua scripts, the Lua exe path be the path to your Lua exe (from the binaries) and command line thing empty (unless you want command line args).

Extra/Repeat of information:

Original BabeLua site: http://babelua.codeplex.com/
My modified BabeLua plugin: http://www.mediafire.com/download/71eg3 ... rsion.vsix
Visual Studio Community 2013 page: https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/prod ... ty-vs.aspx
Lua binaries: https://code.google.com/p/luaforwindows ... e&can=2&q=


Hope this works for everyone and that it augments their modding experience!


Note: Both my modified version and the original are licensed under the MIT license which is included with both downloads and is licensed by each respective author.

[keyboardhack]

Nice work with this. I think i will be using this from now on as my modding enviroment.

Will add one thing i noticed when setting up the plugin.
The name of your .lua file has to be in the "Command line" field. so if my lua file is "Derp.lua" then that has to be in the command line awell.
You can at any tine change the field in Projects -> Properties

[semvoz]

There's a free Lua plugin which is not bad at all that you get for free (without any hack) when you get IntelliJ community, that's what I am using, it's working pretty well, it offers all the common feature you have with IntelliJ (which is a long long list that I won't provide here ) the plugin is here but directly obtainable from your IntellIJ instance (options/plugins).

[tjmonk15]

I found this plugin as well the other day, but I could not get debugging to work within factorio. Were you able to actually debug a mod with this plugin?

- Monk

[johanwanderer]

For those of us who are a bit more... old school

Lua plugin for Visual Studio 2005:
http://luaforge.net/projects/lualangpack/

[microsoftdotcom]

I tried the babelua plugin and it works, but when debugging inside of Visual Studio, the lua.exe command window pops up and closes immediately if the code is correct.
I tried making a testfile.lua with a print("hello") statement and it is still doing this.

How can I fix this guys? I want it to stop closing the lua command window so I can actually see the output that is printed out. Pls help
Thanks in advance

[keyboardhack]

I tried the babelua plugin and it works, but when debugging inside of Visual Studio, the lua.exe command window pops up and closes immediately if the code is correct.
I tried making a testfile.lua with a print("hello") statement and it is still doing this.

How can I fix this guys? I want it to stop closing the lua command window so I can actually see the output that is printed out. Pls help
Thanks in advance

Place

Code: Select all

io.read()

at the end of the code.
that will wait for user input before closing the window.

[slindenau]

I found this plugin as well the other day, but I could not get debugging to work within factorio. Were you able to actually debug a mod with this plugin?

- Monk

I'm experimenting with this IntelliJ plugin, and would like to setup debugging. How are you debugging mods within Factorio from Visual Studio?
Do you also have the Factorio API loaded in VS so you get autocomplete & documentation inside VS?