Build a self-contained luacheck binary on the target machine from the latest sources

build-luacheck.sh

#!/bin/bash
# Build a single-file, self-contained luacheck ELF binary from source.
# No root, no package manager, no `make install`; everything under $DIR.
#
# Prereqs on the host (system defaults are enough on RHEL 8+):
#   curl git gcc make ar ranlib strip lua
#
# Mirrors the versions upstream's own release build uses
# (luacheck/scripts/build-binaries.sh + luacheck/build/Makefile), minus
# LuaLanes (optional; adds --jobs N parallelism, not needed for lint).

set -euo pipefail

# ---- 0. Choose your prefix ----
DIR=$(pwd)/luacheck-build

# Pinned versions (match upstream's build/Makefile).
LUA_VERSION=5.4.4
LFS_VERSION=1_8_0
ARGPARSE_VERSION=0.7.1
LUACHECK_TAG=v1.2.0

BUILD_DIR="$DIR/build"
DIST_DIR="$DIR/dist"
LUACHECK_SRC="$DIR/luacheck"

echo "== Prep build tree under $BUILD_DIR"
rm -rf "$BUILD_DIR"
mkdir -p "$BUILD_DIR" "$DIST_DIR"
cd "$BUILD_DIR"

# ---- 1. Fetch the pinned sources ----
echo "== Fetch Lua $LUA_VERSION"
curl -sL "https://www.lua.org/ftp/lua-${LUA_VERSION}.tar.gz" | tar xz

echo "== Fetch LuaFileSystem $LFS_VERSION"
curl -sL "https://github.com/lunarmodules/luafilesystem/archive/v${LFS_VERSION}.tar.gz" | tar xz

echo "== Fetch argparse $ARGPARSE_VERSION"
curl -sL "https://github.com/luarocks/argparse/archive/${ARGPARSE_VERSION}.tar.gz" | tar xz

echo "== Fetch luastatic (bundler)"
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ers35/luastatic.git

if [ ! -d "$LUACHECK_SRC" ]; then
    echo "== Fetch luacheck $LUACHECK_TAG"
    git clone --depth 1 --branch "$LUACHECK_TAG" \
        https://github.com/lunarmodules/luacheck.git "$LUACHECK_SRC"
fi

# ---- 2. Build liblua.a (static Lua interpreter library, no install) ----
echo "== Build liblua.a"
( cd "lua-${LUA_VERSION}" && make posix -j"$(nproc)" >/dev/null )
LUA_INC="$BUILD_DIR/lua-${LUA_VERSION}/src"
LUA_A="$BUILD_DIR/lua-${LUA_VERSION}/src/liblua.a"

# ---- 3. Build lfs.a (static LuaFileSystem archive) ----
echo "== Build lfs.a"
LFS_SRC_DIR="$BUILD_DIR/luafilesystem-${LFS_VERSION}/src"
gcc -c -O2 -Wall -I "$LUA_INC" \
    -o "$LFS_SRC_DIR/lfs.o" \
    "$LFS_SRC_DIR/lfs.c"
ar rcs "$LFS_SRC_DIR/lfs.a" "$LFS_SRC_DIR/lfs.o"
ranlib "$LFS_SRC_DIR/lfs.a"
LFS_A="$LFS_SRC_DIR/lfs.a"

# ---- 4. Stage the flat layout luastatic wants ----
#   - luacheck modules under ./luacheck/  (copied from the git clone)
#   - argparse.lua at the top level
#   - main script copied to ./luacheck_bin.lua so it does NOT collide
#     with the module namespace called 'luacheck' (upstream Makefile
#     does exactly the same thing).
echo "== Stage sources for bundler"
cp -r "$LUACHECK_SRC/src/luacheck" .
cp    "$LUACHECK_SRC/bin/luacheck.lua" ./luacheck_bin.lua
cp    "argparse-${ARGPARSE_VERSION}/src/argparse.lua" .

# ---- 5. Bundle: one gcc pass -> single ELF ----
echo "== Bundle with luastatic"
CC=gcc NM=nm RANLIB=ranlib \
lua luastatic/luastatic.lua \
    luacheck_bin.lua \
    luacheck/*.lua luacheck/*/*.lua luacheck/*/*/*.lua \
    argparse.lua \
    "$LUA_A" "$LFS_A" \
    -lm -lpthread -ldl \
    -I "$LUA_INC"

# luastatic writes ./luacheck_bin in CWD.
test -f luacheck_bin

# ---- 6. Strip and install to $DIST_DIR ----
echo "== Strip and install to $DIST_DIR/luacheck"
mv luacheck_bin "$DIST_DIR/luacheck"
strip "$DIST_DIR/luacheck"

# ---- 7. Verify ----
echo "== Verify"
"$DIST_DIR/luacheck" --version

echo
echo "OK: $DIST_DIR/luacheck"
ls -la "$DIST_DIR/luacheck"