Can bytecode produced by luac be used on computers with no Lua library?

Question

If I compile a regular .lua file with luac, can the result be ran without the Lua library or interpreter installed?

Answer 1

No. You can run it on a version of Lua that was built without the compiler, but you still need the Lua interpreter to execute the code.

Incidentally, the compiled Lua bytecode is also machine-specific; i.e. you can't compile on one architecture and then run that output on another architecture unless you understand the subtleties (endianness, sizes of types, etc.).

Answer 2

If your code doesn't use any dynamic load-based facility (that's loadstring, loadfile, require, etc.) you can strip Lua library to just a VM, because what compiler emits is code to be run on this virtual machine. This can easily cut Lua already small footprint to 1/3 fraction of original.

However, since this is NOT a native binary code for any currently existing architecture, you still CAN'T run it directly without assistance of VM.