Skip to main content

​
Installing Full Moon

Full Moon is available as a Rust crate on crates.io. This guide will walk you through adding it to your project and configuring the feature flags for your target Lua version.

​
Basic Installation

1

Add Full Moon to Cargo.toml

Add the following line to your Cargo.toml under [dependencies]:
Cargo.toml
[dependencies]
full_moon = "2.1.1"
This installs Full Moon with the default features (Lua 5.1 support with serde serialization).
2

Import in your code

Import Full Moon in your Rust source file:
use full_moon::parse;
3

Parse Lua code

You’re ready to parse Lua code:
let ast = parse("local x = 1")?;

​
Feature Flags

Full Moon supports multiple Lua versions through Cargo feature flags. By default, only Lua 5.1 is supported.

​
Available Features

serde

Default: EnabledEnables serialization and deserialization support for AST nodes using serde.
full_moon = { version = "2.1.1", default-features = false }

lua52

Enables Lua 5.2 syntax support including:
  • goto statements
  • Labels
  • ::label:: syntax
full_moon = { version = "2.1.1", features = ["lua52"] }

lua53

Enables Lua 5.3 syntax support (includes lua52 features).
full_moon = { version = "2.1.1", features = ["lua53"] }

lua54

Enables Lua 5.4 syntax support including:
  • To-be-closed variables (<const>, <close>)
  • Attributes
Includes lua53 and lua52 features.
full_moon = { version = "2.1.1", features = ["lua54"] }

luau

Enables Luau (Roblox Lua) syntax support including:
  • Type annotations
  • Compound assignments (+=, -=, etc.)
  • Interpolated strings
  • Generics and type packs
full_moon = { version = "2.1.1", features = ["luau"] }

luajit

Enables LuaJIT-specific syntax support.
full_moon = { version = "2.1.1", features = ["luajit"] }

cfxlua

Enables CfxLua (FiveM) syntax support (includes lua54 features).
full_moon = { version = "2.1.1", features = ["cfxlua"] }

​
Combining Features

You can enable multiple features simultaneously: 
[dependencies]
full_moon = { version = "2.1.1", features = ["lua52", "lua54"] }
When you enable a higher Lua version feature (e.g., lua54), it automatically includes all lower versions (lua53, lua52). You only need to specify the highest version you need.

​
Version Selection at Runtime

When multiple Lua versions are enabled, Full Moon automatically selects the most complete version. You can also manually specify the version: 
use full_moon::{parse_fallible, LuaVersion};

// Manually specify Lua 5.2
let ast_result = parse_fallible(code, LuaVersion::lua52());

// Use the newest available version
let ast_result = parse_fallible(code, LuaVersion::new());

​
Verifying Installation

Create a simple test to verify Full Moon is working:
src/main.rs
use full_moon::parse;

fn main() {
    match parse("local x = 1 + 2") {
        Ok(ast) => println!("Successfully parsed: {}", ast),
        Err(errors) => eprintln!("Parse errors: {:?}", errors),
    }
}
Run your project: 
cargo run
You should see: 
Successfully parsed: local x = 1 + 2

​
Next Steps

Quick Start Guide

Learn how to parse Lua code and traverse the AST

Build docs developers (and LLMs) love

Get started for freeTalk to us