# rlua -- High level bindings between Rust and Lua
[](https://circleci.com/gh/kyren/rlua)
[](https://crates.io/crates/rlua)
[](https://docs.rs/rlua)
[Guided Tour](examples/guided_tour.rs)
This library is a high level interface between Rust and Lua. Its major goal is
to expose as easy to use, practical, and flexible of an API between Rust and Lua
as possible, while also being *completely* safe.
`rlua` is NOT designed to be a perfect zero cost wrapper over the Lua C API,
because such a wrapper cannot maintain the safety guarantees that `rlua` is
designed to have. Every place where the Lua C API may trigger an error longjmp
in any way is protected by `lua_pcall`, and the user of the library is protected
from directly interacting with unsafe things like the Lua stack, and there is
overhead associated with this safety. However, performance *is* a focus of the
library to the extent possible while maintaining safety, so if you encounter
something that is egregiously worse than using the Lua C API directly, or simply
something you feel could perform better, feel free to file a bug report.
## API stability
This library is very much Work In Progress, so there is a some API churn.
Currently, it follows a pre-1.0 semver, so all API changes should be accompanied
by 0.x version bumps.
The new 0.16 release has a particularly *large* amount of API breakage which was
required to fix several long-standing limitations and bugs. The biggest change
by far is that most API usage now takes place through `Lua::context` callbacks
rather than directly on the main `Lua` state object. See CHANGELOG.md for
information about other API changes, and also see the guided tour for an example
of using the new `Context` API.
## Safety and Panics
The goal of this library is complete safety: it should not be possible to cause
undefined behavior whatsoever with the safe API, even in edge cases. There is,
however, QUITE a lot of unsafe code in this crate, and I would call the current
safety level of the crate "Work In Progress". Still, unsoundness is considered
the most serious kind of bug, so if you find the ability to cause UB with this
API *at all* without `unsafe`, please file a bug report.
Another goal of this library is complete protection from panics: currently, it
should not be possible for a script to trigger a panic. There ARE however
several internal panics in the library, but triggering them is considered a bug.
Similarly to the memory safety goal, the current panic safety of this library is
still "Work In Progress", but if you find a way to trigger internal panics,
please file a bug report.
Yet another goal of the library is to, in all cases, safely handle panics that
are generated inside Rust callbacks. Panic unwinds in Rust callbacks should
currently be handled correctly -- the unwind is caught and carried across the
Lua API boundary as a regular Lua error in a way that prevents Lua from catching
it. This is done by overriding the normal Lua 'pcall' and 'xpcall' functions
with custom versions that cannot catch errors that are actually from Rust
panics, and by handling panic errors on the receiving Rust side by resuming the
panic.
`rlua` should also be panic safe in another way as well, which is that any `Lua`
instances or handles should remain usable after a user generated panic, and such
panics should not break internal invariants or leak Lua stack space. This is
mostly important to safely use `rlua` types in Drop impls, as you should not be
using panics for general error handling.
In summary, here is a list of `rlua` behaviors that should be considered a bug.
If you encounter them, a bug report would be very welcome:
* If you can cause UB at all with `rlua` without typing the word "unsafe",
this is absolutely 100% a bug.
* If your program panics with a message that contains the string "rlua
internal error", this is a bug.
* The above is true even for the internal panic about running out of stack
space! There are a few ways to generate normal script errors by running out
of stack, but if you encounter a *panic* based on running out of stack, this
is a bug.
* If you load the "debug" library (which requires typing "unsafe"), the safety
and panic guarantees go out the window. The debug library can be used to do
extremely scary things. If you use the debug library and encounter a bug,
*it may still very well be a bug*, but try to find a reproduction that does
not involve the debug library first.
* When the internal version of Lua is built using the `cc` crate, and
`cfg!(debug_assertions)` is true, Lua is built with the `LUA_USE_APICHECK`
define set. Any abort caused by this internal Lua API checking is
*absolutely* a bug, and is likely to be a soundness bug because without
`LUA_USE_APICHECK` it would likely instead be UB.
* Lua C API errors are handled by lonjmp. *ALL* instances where the Lua C API
would otherwise longjmp over calling stack frames should be guarded against,
except in internal callbacks where this is intentional. If you detect that
`rlua` is triggering a longjmp over your Rust stack frames, this is a bug!
* If you can somehow handle a panic triggered from a Rust callback in Lua,
this is a bug.
* If you detect that, after catching a panic or during a Drop triggered from a
panic, a `Lua` or handle method is triggering other bugs or there is a Lua
stack space leak, this is a bug. `rlua` instances are supposed to remain
fully usable in the face of user generated panics. This guarantee does not
extend to panics marked with "rlua internal error" simply because that is
already indicative of a separate bug.
## Sandboxing and Untrusted Scripts
The API now contains the pieces necessary to implement simple, limited
"sanboxing" of Lua scripts by controlling their environment, limiting their
allotted VM instructions, and limiting the amount of memory they may allocate.
These features deserve a few words of warning: **Do not use them to run
untrusted scripts unless you really Know What You Are Doing (tm)** (and even
then, you probably should not do this).
First, this library contains a *shocking* amount of unsafe code, and I currently
*would not trust it in a truly security sensitive context*. There are almost
certainly bugs still lurking in this library! It is surprisingly, fiendishly
difficult to use the Lua C API without the potential for unsafety.
Second, PUC-Rio Lua is a C library not *really* designed to be used with
untrusted scripts. Please understand that though PUC-Rio Lua is an extremely
well written language runtime, it is still quite a lot of C code, and it is not
commonly used with truly malicious scripts. Take a look
[here](https://www.lua.org/bugs.html) and count how many bugs resulted in memory
unsafety in the interpreter. Another small example: did you know there is a way
to attack Lua tables to cause linear complexity in the table length operator?
That this still counts as one VM instruction?
Third, if you provide a callback API to scripts, it can be very very difficult
to secure that API. Do all of your API functions have some maximum runtime? Do
any of your API functions allow the script to allocate via Rust? Are there
limits on how much they can allocate this way? All callback functions still
count as a single VM instruction!
Fourth, especially in the context of sharing the environment across separate
sandboxed scripts, properly sandobxing Lua can be quite difficult. Some
information on this (and also useful information about Lua sandboxing in
general) can be found [here](http://lua-users.org/wiki/SandBoxes).
In any case, sandboxing in this way may still be useful to protect against buggy
(but non-malicious) scripts, and may even serve as a single *layer* of a larger
security strategy, but **please think twice before relying on this to protect
you from untrusted Lua code**.