Alien - Pure Lua extensions
===========================
  
Status
------ 
  
This is Alien version 0.5.1. For more information check
http://mascarenhas.github.com/alien.

What is Alien
-------------

*Alien* is a Foreign Function Interface (FFI) for Lua. An FFI lets you
call functions in dynamic libraries (.so, .dylib, .dll, etc.) from Lua
code without having to write, compile and link a C binding from the
library to Lua. In other words, it lets you write extensions that call
out to native code using just Lua.

Alien works on Unix-based systems and Windows. It has been tested on Linux
x86, Linux x64, Linux ARM, FreeBSD x86, Windows x86, OSX x86, and OSX PPC. 
The Windows binary uses MSVCR80.DLL for compatibility with LuaBinaries.

Installing Alien
----------------

The best way to install Alien is through
[LuaRocks](http://luarocks.org). Just do `luarocks install alien`. You may need
root permissions to do this, depending on your LuaRocks configuration.

Credits
-------

Alien is designed and implemented by Fabio Mascarenhas. It uses the
great [libffi](http://sources.redhat.com/libffi)
library by Anthony Green (and others) to do the heavy lifting of calling
to and from C. The name is stolen from Common Lisp FFIs.

License
-------

Alien's uses the MIT license.