In trying to configure elinks with Lua I encountered several problems, first of which was that I was unable to ./configure it.
I've patched configure.in:

AC_ARG_WITH(lua, [ --without-lua disable Lua support],
[if test "$withval" = no; then disable_lua=yes; fi])
AC_MSG_CHECKING([for Lua])

EL_SAVE_FLAGS
cf_result=no

if test -z "$disable_lua"; then
if test ! -d "$withval"; then
withval="";
fi
for luadir in "$withval" "" /usr /usr/local; do
for suffix in "" 50 51; do
if test "$cf_result" = no; then
for lualib in "" "-llualib$suffix"; do
if test "$cf_result" = no; then
LUA_LIBS="-llua$suffix $lualib -lm"

if test ! -z "$luadir"; then
LUA_LIBS="-L$luadir/lib $LUA_LIBS"
LUA_CFLAGS="-I$luadir/include -I$luadir/include/lua$suffix"
fi

LIBS="$LUA_LIBS $LIBS_X"
CFLAGS="$CFLAGS_X $LUA_CFLAGS"
CPPFLAGS="$CPPFLAGS_X $LUA_CFLAGS"

# Check that it is a compatible Lua version
AC_TRY_LINK([ #include <lua.h>
#include <lualib.h>],
[ lua_State *L = lua_open();
luaopen_base(L);
luaopen_table(L);
luaopen_io(L);
luaopen_string(L);
luaopen_math(L);
lua_pushboolean(L, 1);
lua_close(L);],
cf_result=yes, cf_result=no)
fi
done
fi
done
done
fi

AC_MSG_RESULT($cf_result)

if test "$cf_result" != yes; then
EL_RESTORE_FLAGS
else



succeeding with the configure, but that left me unable to link:
[LINK] src/elinks
lib.o: In function `l_tmpname':
core.c:(.text+0x75140): warning: the use of `tempnam' is dangerous, better use `mkstemp'
lib.o: In function `handle_ret_eval':
core.c:(.text+0x7479d): undefined reference to `lua_dostring'
lib.o: In function `do_hooks_file':
core.c:(.text+0x74885): undefined reference to `lua_dofile'
lib.o: In function `script_hook_quit':
hooks.c:(.text+0x764c8): undefined reference to `lua_dostring'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make[1]: *** [elinks] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/var/abs/extra/network/elinks/src/elinks-0.11.1/src'
make: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
==> ERROR: Build Failed. Aborting...
makepkg 193.43s user 34.25s system 87% cpu 4:19.20 total



I have not yet traced exactly what triggers the link error, whether it's ./configure believing to be confronted with lua 4.x or elinks not caring which version it's configured with at all.