ZeroBrane Studio is a lightweight open-source Lua IDE with code completion, syntax highlighting, code analyzer, live coding, and debugging support for Lua 5.1, Lua 5.2, Lua 5.3, Lua 5.4, LuaJIT, and other Lua engines. ZeroBrane Studio is a cross-platform application written in Lua that runs on Windows (Windows XP+), Linux, and macOS (10.9+) operating systems. It uses the wxWidgets toolkit and the Scintilla component for file editing.

History ZeroBrane Studio was created by Paul Kulchenko in September 2011 as a way to allow inexperienced users to run and debug Lua applications,Drawing trees with turtles initially targeting Lua applications running on mobile devices. It was based on open-source Estrela EditorEstrela Editor project page for Luxinia, an open-source 3D graphics engine. Estrela Editor was developed starting from August 2008 based on one of the sample applications included with wxLua wrapperwxLua project page around wxWidgets.

The first public version of ZeroBrane Studio was released in January 2012.ZeroBrane Studio changelog During the first year of the project, the development of Estrela and ZeroBrane Studio continued in parallel and in October 2012 Estrela Editor project was fully merged into ZeroBrane Studio project.

Features Auto-completion Multiple document support Syntax highlighting Code folding Brace and indent highlighting Bookmarks Project support Debugging, including remote and cross-platform debugging Interactive console to directly test code snippets with local and remote execution Static analyzer Customizable shortcut key mapping Function list Fuzzy search with navigation to files, lines, and symbols/functions Markdown formatting in comments Dark mode and color scheme support Extensive documentationZeroBrane Studio documentation and tutorialsZeroBrane Studio tutorials and demos Integration with LuaDist package managerLuaDist package manager integration with ZeroBrane Studio

Interpreter integration ZeroBrane Studio provides integration and debugging support for Lua 5.1, Lua 5.2, Lua 5.3, Lua 5.4, and LuaJIT interpreters integrated into various products: CoronaSDK, Cocos2d, Moai SDK, LÖVE, Gideros, Redis, Torch, Adobe Lightroom, Nginx Lua scripts and more.ZeroBrane Studio documentation: Debugging

There are several booksFrancisco Tufró (2013). Developing Mobile Games with Moai SDK (ch.2), Packt Publishing (March 25, 2013). Brian Burton (2013). Learning Mobile Application & Game Development with Corona SDK (p.324), Burtons Media Group; 1 edition (April 1, 2013). Jayant Varma (2012). Learn Lua for iOS Game Development (p.320), Apress; 1 edition (December 17, 2012). Robert Cook (2014). Introduction to Programming with Lua and the Corona Game Lab (ch.8), Cook's Books; 1.0 edition (February 28, 2014) and tutorialsUsing ZeroBrane Studio with Moai (it also works with LOVE)Debugging and live coding with Corona SDKWhy and how to use Gideros with ZeroBrane Studio IDEUsing ZeroBrane Studio with Marmalade Quick that cover using ZeroBrane Studio with various game and mobile toolkits. It has also been used in teaching undergraduate and graduate class on mobile application development.Mobile App Development course information

Debugging ZeroBrane Studio provides local, remote and cross-platform debugging for applications executing Lua code. The debugger supports the following functions: step through the code, set/remove breakpoints, inspect variables and expressions using the Watch window, inspect the call stack with local values and upvalues (local values defined in the outer scope of the current function) using the Stack window, suspend/resume the running application, and run Lua commands in the Console window.

The IDE also supports on-device debugging for Corona SDKCorona on-device debugging and Gideros Mobile software development kits, with the application running on a mobile device and the IDE running on a desktop computer.

Live coding In addition to debugging Lua applications, ZeroBrane Studio also supports live coding, which allows making changes to the application code while the application is running and seeing the results of the changes in the application. The live coding is supported for Lua interpreters and several other environments.ZeroBrane Studio live codingTwenty Minutes to Awesome - livecoding Gideros with ZeroBrane Studio

Plugins ZeroBrane Studio includes support for plugins written in Lua.ZeroBrane Studio plugin documentation The open source plugin repositoryZeroBrane Studio plugin repository currently lists 45 plugins that range from simple plugins that customize the environment to more complex ones that provide real-time watches,Plugin: Real-time watches document map, or split screen editing.Plugin: Clone view

Integrated educational materials Packaged versions of ZeroBrane Studio distributed from the project websiteZeroBrane Studio project page include educational materials for Lua with more than 50 simple scripts and examples, demonstrating use of Lua with Turtle graphics and Spirograph scripts.ZeroBrane Studio EduPack ZeroBrane Studio supports Markdown formatting in comments, which supports text formatting and references to other Lua files and external resources. It supports execution of Lua commands directly in the IDE, providing integration with included educational materials.

Interface translations ZeroBrane Studio supports interface translationZeroBrane Studio translation documentation into different languages by providing a Lua file containing all text that should be translated. As of 2020, the user community has contributed translations to eleven languages.ZeroBrane Studio in seven languagesZeroBrane Studio list of translation files

See also

List of integrated development environments

References

External links