Install local lua interpreter

It is recommended to install a local lua interpreter. By having this you can "compile" DCS-BIOS (generate the JSON files). This will catch syntax and other errors without having to use DCS and is much faster.

It is also often useful to test lua snippets locally to make sure the syntax and result is correct, no need to have DCS running.

This will of course not show any runtime errors within DCS-BIOS.

Installation alternative 1

Installation alternative 2

TDM GCC can be found here.

Follow this guide for installing on Windows.

You may stumble upon this v.5.1.5 bug also.

• Add the lua bin folder to your enviroment path variable
• Run like lua test.lua

Check the bin directory of you lua installation. There should be lua.exe, you also need lua5.1.exe because that is what is called from VS Code. If you only have lua 5.1.5 installed then make a copy of the lua.exe and rename it to lua5.1.exe. If you have several versions installed then rename lua.exe.

This enables having multiple versions of lua installed.