any detailed installation guide on Ubuntu 16.04?

[goodnamegood]

There isn't any installation guide in the README file. I've tried to use pip install lunatic-python but it didn't work. Could anyone provide the necessary guidance and hopefully update the README file?

[user202729]

This fork seems to be the most well-maintained one, although the instruction guide isn't that clear (unfortunately).

For the build/install itself, unfortunately it's not very obvious, but it's mentioned in several past (closed) issues, such as #74 .

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Commonly-made mistakes

• lunatic-python package on pypi is the old package, not this fork.
• lunatic-python-universal is this other fork OddSource/lunatic-python: A two-way bridge between Python and Lua.
  It can be installed from pip (as far as I can see, that would only allow calling Lua from Python, not vice versa, just like Lupa)
• Do not run make at top level. The Makefile does not work anymore.
• Do not run python setup.py at top level. The setup.py file does not work anymore since the PYTHON_LIBRT update.

Build

cmake -B build
cmake --build build

Specify Python version

• -DPYTHON_INCLUDE_DIR=/usr/include/python3.8 -DPYTHON_LIBRARY=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpython3.8.so -- reference: Issue running on Ubuntu 20.04 using Python 3.8 #74 (comment).

Specify Lua version

• -D LUA_LIBRARY=/usr/lib/liblua5.3.so -D LUA_INCLUDE_DIR=/usr/include/lua5.3/

Note that if these 2 points to different Lua versions they will still compile but may raise "undefined symbol" error.

Documentation: https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/module/FindLua.html (TODO where is LUA_LIBRARY documented?)

Result

After this you should get files build/bin/lua.so and build/bin/python.so, which are the libraries.

Install

Import Python from Lua

In order to allow require "python" in Lua, copy the python.so library to somewhere that Lua can access, such as /usr/lib/lua/5.4 or /usr/lib/lua/5.3
(checks package.cpath and _VERSION in Lua environment, for LuaLaTeX there are special instructions, see https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/372134/250119).

Import Lua from Python

Linking it to Python packages library with an appropriate name would work with the command

sudo ln -s -T /usr/local/lib/python3.8/dist-packages/lua.cpython-38-x86_64-linux-gnu.so /usr/local/lib/lua/5.1/python.so

Change the version accordingly.

Reference: #74 (comment).