The Lua scripting language has been designed to be embedded into software written in C to allow for scripting and extending of such software. Lua is popular because it is easy to integrate and the language itself is simple and easy to learn. The compact code size and small memory footprint make it a candidate for embedded use.

Most Lua use cases are to extend end-user software, like e.g. the popular game "World of Warcraft" or the photo editing and archiving software "Adobe Lightroom". In this presentation, however, the author will show how Lua can be used in an operating system kernel. An actual implementation will be presented based on the NetBSD Unix-like open source operating system.