ConTeXt and Lua programming/ConTeXt Development

History and versions

• ConTeXt history
• LuaTeX
• There are also a few references to the History of TeX (2007) (it would benefit from an update).

Here are the documents where Hans Hagen keep track of the evolutions of ConTEXt from Mark II (based on TeX) to Mark IV (based on LuaTeX) to LMTX (based on LuaMetaTeX). In 2006, Dave Walden interviewed Hans Hagen.

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  9- More to come (2025)
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  8- Beyond luametatex & context lmtx (2025)
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  7- On target - luametatex & context lmtx (2023)
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  ConTeXt Musing (2023)
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  6- Even More – fun with luametatex and context (2020)
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  5.5- Not Now (2018)
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  5- Following up (current working report) (2025)
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  4.5- On and on (2022)
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  4- Still going on (2016)
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  3- About LuaTeX and ConTeXt in 2015 (2015)
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  2- MkIV Hybrid Technology - How LuaTeX combines TeX, MetaPost, Lua and XML (2012)
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  1- Context MarkII MarkIV - The history of LuaTeX 2006–2009 (2016)
• 
  Read Me first (2016)

Source code

• The Current version
• Git Mirrors at Bitbucket and GitHub
• ConTeXt source browser and its documentation
• Test suite

Comment: There is no official repository where the development is on-going. The source code is released irregularly and placed at the https://www.pragma-ade.com website. The git and source browser repositories are updated by a script from the Current version of the source code.

Building / compiling

• Building luametatex is done with build.sh and you can read build.txt. See also Manual Compilation
• Building LuaMetaTeX for TeX Live

Bug tracker

• ConTeXt and LuaTeX
• ConTeXt minimal distribution installation scripts

Documentation

• System Macros (recommended reading), commands, and other programming.
• Implementation reports: select "Development" in Documentation
• LuaTeX documentation

• 
  Low Level Tex – Characters (2025)
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  Low Level Tex – Conditionals (2025)
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  Low Level Tex (2025)
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  Low Level Tex – Debugging (2025)
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  Low Level Tex – Pages (2025)
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  Low Level Tex – Alignements (2024)
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  Low Level Tex – Macros (2024)
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  Low Level Tex – Paragraphs (2024)
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  Low Level Tex – Balancing (2024)
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  Low Level Tex – Accuracy (2023)
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  Low Level Tex – Boxes (2023)
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  Low Level Tex – Buffers (2023)
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  Low Level Tex – Lines (2023)
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  Low Level Tex – Localboxes (2023)
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  Low Level Tex – Loops (2023)
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  Low Level Tex – Registers (2023)
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  Low Level Tex – Tokens (2023)
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  Low Level Tex – Inserts (2021)
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  Low Level Tex – Marks (2021)
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  Low Level Tex – Scope (2021)
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  Low Level Tex – Grouping (2020)
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  Low Level Tex – Security (2020)
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  Low Level Tex – Expansion (2019)