Luaosutils is an ad-hoc collection of utility functions that access operating system features. It is written in C++ to be used with the Lua language. While the build projects are designed so that it is a simple drop-in to the Lua implementation running on Finale, it could be used with any Lua implementation if someone wants to take the time to develop the build process.
A primary distinguishing feature of luaosutils is that it makes direct API calls on each supported operating system. Other Lua C-libraries tend to avoid OS-specific implementations wherever possible, but that is the whole point with this library. If you examine the src directory, you will find parallel implementation files for each operating system. This approach allows for zero external dependencies.
The RGP Lua plugin running on Finale embeds a version of luaosutils, and no additional installation is necessary to use the embedded version. However, if you wish to use an external version, the following steps apply.
The release directory contains two files:
luaosutils.dll(for Windows)luaosutils.dylib(for macOS)
These are built with Lua 5.4.6.
Choose the appropriate release for your operating system and place it in a folder where Lua can find it with require. For the Finale Lua environment, a simple option is to place luaosutils.dll (Windows) or luaosutils.dylib (macOS) in the same folder as the script that requires it.
If you are bundling luaosutils externally with a plugin suite for end users, you may need to build, sign, and notarize it yourself for it to be deployable without error messages on macOS.
*Items marked with an asterisk are not available in restricted mode. You can load a restricted verision of the library as follows:
local osutils = require('luaosutils.restricted')This prevents the script from doing things such as changing application menus or executing external code. The restricted mode is primarily useful to environments where luaosutils is embedded in the environment. The host app can determine if it trusts the code and either make the full or the restricted version of luaosutils available as is appropriate.
Luaosutils groups related functions into namespaces. You can find more information about each on the following documentation pages.
crypto: Functions related to encoding and decoding strings and binary data.internet: Functions for accessing resources on the internet withhttpscalls.menu: Functions for manipulating menu items.process: Functions for launching other processes.text: Functions for detecting and modifying text encoding of 8-bit character strings.
A list of updates by version is available here.