Documentation

This page is the index of documentation resources for LuaRocks. If you don't find the answers to your questions here, contact us on the Gitter chat-room!

Table of Contents Quick start Tutorials Concepts Command-line tools Reference material Support / more resources Presentations

Quick start

If you're just getting started with LuaRocks, these are things you probably want to read first:

• Download
• To install, choose the one appropriate for your platform:
  • Installation instructions for Unix
  • Installation instructions for Windows
• Using LuaRocks

The sections below provide more comprehensive information for creating your own rocks.

Tutorials

• Creating a rock - for Lua developers who want to make their code available through LuaRocks.
• Recommended practices for Makefiles - things Lua module authors can do to their Makefiles to improve portability and ease of packaging.
• Creating a Makefile that plays nice with LuaRocks - like the above, but in tutorial form.
• Creating LuaRocks with GNU autotools - some pointers to automating the creation of LuaRocks for your GNU autotools-based projects
• Pinning versions with a lock file - how to get more deterministic builds through the use of a lock file

Concepts

These pages explain some concepts about LuaRocks:

• Types of rocks - What are rocks: source rocks, binary rocks...
• Rocks repositories - rocks servers and rocks trees are rocks repositories.
• Dependencies - How LuaRocks understands dependencies.
  • Platform-agnostic external dependencies - How to specify dependencies on non-Lua libraries in a portable manner.
  • Paths and external dependencies - Configuring path for Lua and other C modules needed by rocks.
• Using LuaRocks - How to use LuaRocks once it is installed and configured.
• Namespaces - How LuaRocks understand namespaces (as in `luarocks install account/rock`)

Command-line tools

• luarocks - The LuaRocks command-line interface.
• luarocks-admin - The repository management tool.

Reference material

• File formats - Reference on the various files used by LuaRocks.
  • Rockspec format - Rockspecs are the files which contain rules explaining how rocks are built and installed as well as their dependencies and other metadata.
    • Platform overrides - How to add platform-specific parts in rockspecs.
  • Config file format - The specification of the LuaRocks configuration file format, as it takes shape.
  • Manifest file format - The index file that describes a LuaRocks servers and trees.
  • Rock file format - Reference to the .rock file format: the installable packages produced from rockspecs.
• File locations - The various locations of files installed and used by LuaRocks.
• LuaRocks through a proxy - Configuring HTTP/FTP proxies for use with LuaRocks.
• Development - Documentation related to the development of LuaRocks itself.

Support / more resources

• On LuaRocks:
  • Gitter chat-room - for all things LuaRocks!
• On Lua:
  • Lua mailing list - for questions about the Lua language itself or specific Lua modules (most module authors hang out there!)
  • Lua documentation - documentation on the Lua language, including the reference manual
  • Lua Forum - a beginner friendly Lua community
• On LuaJIT:
  • LuaJIT mailing list - for LuaJIT-specific discussion

Presentations

• LuaRocks: fostering an ecosystem for Lua modules, presented by Hisham Muhammad at FOSDEM 2015, Brussels, Belgium
• What's new in LuaRocks, presented by Hisham Muhammad at the Lua Workshop 2014, Moscow, Russia
• LuaRocks - past, present and future, presented by Hisham Muhammad at the Lua Workshop 2013, Toulouse, France
• LuaRocks 2.0, presented by Hisham Muhammad at the Lua Workshop 2009, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
• LuaRocks: o sistema de pacotes de extensão para a linguagem Lua, presented by Hisham Muhammad at FISL 9.0 - IX International Forum on Free Software, Porto Alegre, Brazil