Getting Started

New here? Read Introduction first if you want to understand why Zolo exists — the Lua-ecosystem gap, the 6 pillars, and where it fits. This page is about running code.

Zolo compiles to pure Lua 5.1 bytecode, so the same .zolo you write runs in any Lua host (Roblox, Neovim, Redis, OpenResty, GMod…), and also has native (Cranelift) and WASM targets when there's no host. Let's get a program running.

Installation¶

Build from source:

cargo build --release

The binary will be at target/release/zolo (or target/release/zolo.exe on Windows).

Hello World¶

Create a file hello.zolo:

fn main() {
    print("Hello, Zolo!")
}

main()

Run it:

zolo run hello.zolo

CLI Commands¶

Command	Description
`zolo run <file>`	Compile and execute a `.zolo` file
`zolo <file>`	Shorthand for `zolo run`
`zolo compile <file>`	Show generated Lua code
`zolo check <file>`	Parse and type check without executing
`zolo test [file...]`	Run `@test` functions
`zolo fmt [--check] <file>`	Format source code
`zolo repl`	Interactive REPL
`zolo version`	Show version
`zolo help`	Show help

Test Options¶

zolo test tests.zolo                # run all @test functions
zolo test tests.zolo --filter fib   # only tests matching "fib"
zolo test tests.zolo --list         # list test names without running

Project Structure¶

A typical Zolo project:

my-project/
  src/
    main.zolo       # entry point
    lib.zolo        # library module
    utils.zolo      # utilities
  examples/
    hello.zolo
  tests/
    test_math.zolo

Next¶

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