Installation

What’s Limekit?

Limekit is framework for building desktop applications using the lua language without the need for HTML and CSS. On the other hand allowing developers to maintain one lua codebase and create cross-platform apps that work on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

~ It is being developed by company called Take bytes, with Omega Msiska as the lead developer on this project.

Key Features:

  • Modern UI: Limekit allows developers to craft beautiful UI’s with dark and light modes available.

  • Simplicity: One of the notable features of Limekit is it’s ability to create a working program in under 2 lines of code as shown below.

    1local window = Window{title='Limekit app', icon=images('app.png')}
2window:show()

    • This is basically enough for Limekit to run your program. Mind blowing right? 😊

Guess what?

  • No C, C++ or python knowledge: You don’t need to know any python, C or C++ to develop programs in Limekit, just lua

  • Cross-platform: Run the same code base in Windows, Linux and macOS

  • Free: The framework is free to use

Installing Python

The Limekit framework is built in Python 3.10, so you'll need to have Python 3.10 installed to use the framework. Follow the tutorial to get Python 3.10 installed on your OS.

Note

This guide is for those who haven’t delved into Python before and are installing it for the very first time.

Windows

  • Installing python on Windows is pretty straight forward. Simply visit python’s website to download for your system

Once the installation is complete, open your terminal (Comamnd Prompt or PowerShell) and type the following command:

$ python

If you get a similar output as the one below, you are good to go! 😊

Python 3.10.6 (tags/v3.10.6:9c7b4bd, Aug  1 2022, 21:53:49) [MSC v.1932 64 bit (AMD64)] on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

Navigate to the bottom of the page to follow through the final stages

Linux

Note

The framework has only been tested on Ubuntu, but it’s expected to function on other Linux distros as well.

Important

Before trying to install python3.10, try executing python3.10 or python3 --version in the terminal to see if python is already installed, as most Linux distributions come with python installed

Head over to this website to learn how to install python3.10 on your Linux

Done installing. What’s next?

Important

Read the below instructions before downlaoding anything

All required files should be downloaded from the Releases page (right hand side) in the github links provided

Installation requires an active internet connection

Head over to our github repo to download Limer.

There are over 30 examples prepared for your journey in Limekit, just click here to downlaod them

Note

Limer is the program that only runs your apps. It’s not an IDE or an editor.

Download all the zip files from the Releases section and extract them. Inside the windows-only.zip or linuxmac-only.zip there should be a READ ME.txt file that explains everything.

If everything goes as planned, you’ll be greeted by a screen similar to the one shown below.

_images/limekit.png

You can now start learning how to use widgets.