LuaRocks Wiki: Installation instructions for Unix

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The LuaRocks build system is based on a simple "configure" script and a
Makefile, so the traditional 3-step "configure", "make", "make install"
process works as expected. The "configure" script offers some flags
that are useful for different models of use of LuaRocks. Run <tt>./configure --help</tt>
for details.

== Quick start ==

To get a default installation of Lua and LuaRocks under /usr/local:

* Install Lua, using the appropriate methods for your system.
* Download and unpack the LuaRocks tarball.
* Run "./configure". (This will attempt to detect your installation of Lua. If you get any error messages, see the section "Customizing your settings", below.)
* Run "make".
* As superuser, run "make install".

== The default settings ==

The default settings are suitable for installing LuaRocks globally
in your system while allowing both system-wide and per-user sets of rocks.
User accounts will be able to install their own rocks in their $HOME
directory, and the superuser can install rocks that will be available
for everyone.

By default LuaRocks will install itself in /usr/local, like Lua, and
will use /usr/local/etc/luarocks/config.lua as a default path for the configuration
file. The default system-wide rocks trees is configured as /usr/local/lib/luarocks,
and per-user rocks install at $HOME/.luarocks/rocks/.
Command-line scripts provided by rocks will be installed in 
/usr/local/lib/luarocks/bin/ or $HOME/.luarocks/bin/, respectively. The user
may then add these directories to their $PATH variable.

== Customizing your settings ==

All paths described above can be overridden with flags in the "configure" script,
or entries in the configuration file.

{| cellpadding=5px
| --prefix=DIR || Prefix where LuaRocks should be installed. Default is /usr/local
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| --sysconfdir=DIR || Location where the config file should be installed. Default is $PREFIX/etc/luarocks
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| --rocks-tree=FILE || Root of the local tree of installed rocks. Default is $PREFIX/lib/luarocks
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| --scripts-dir=DIR || Where to install scripts installed by rocks. Default is $ROCKS_TREE/bin. Use this if you want to modify it so that rocks install scripts somewhere else (possibly somewhere in your $PATH), but if you use a system path such as /usr/bin, beware of clashes between files installed by LuaRocks and by your system's package manager. Example: /usr/local/bin. **Note**: I believe `--scripts-dir` flag was removed from 2.0.1 version. -- DanilKutkevich 2010-04-15 14:51 UTC
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| --lua-suffix=SUFFIX || Versioning suffix to use in Lua filenames. Default is "" (lua...)
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| --with-lua=PREFIX || Use Lua from given prefix. Default is /usr
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| --with-lua-include=DIR || You can also specify Lua's includes dir. Default is $LUA_DIR/include
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| --with-lua-lib=DIR || You can also specify Lua's libraries dir. Default is $LUA_DIR/lib
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| --with-downloader=TOOL || Which tool to use as a downloader. Valid options are: wget, curl. Default is to auto-detect.
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| --with-md5-checker=TOOL || Which tool to use as a download checker. Valid options are: md5sum, openssl. Default is to auto-detect.
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| --force-config || Use a single config location. Do not use the $LUAROCKS_CONFIG variable or the user's home directory. Useful to avoid conflicts when LuaRocks is embedded within an application.
|}

After installation, a default config file called config.lua will be installed at the directory defined by --sysconfdir. For further configuration of LuaRocks paths, see the [Config file format].

== Making a self-contained installation ==

Another option is to install LuaRocks in a self-contained manner. This
is an interesting alternative when shipping an application which uses
third-party modules. Bundling them as rocks reduces maintenance overhead
and allows the user to perform updates.

In this scenario, it is not desired to have the user's (or the system's)
configuration affect the self-contained LuaRocks install, in case the 
user or the system also have different LuaRocks installations. For this
reason, the "configure" script allows to hardcode the location of a
configuration file. For example, the compilation process of a package
bundling LuaRocks could do something like this:

export PREFIX=$HOME/mypackage/
 ./configure --prefix=$PREFIX --sysconfdir=$PREFIX/luarocks --force-config

The copy of LuaRocks installed in $HOME/mypackage/ will ignore
customization schemes such as the $LUAROCKS_CONFIG environment variable
and will only use $HOME/mypackage/luarocks/config.lua.

An interesting option in those cases is for the application to provide
in its configuration file an URL for their own rocks repository, so they
can have control over updates to be performed. Continuing the previous
example, the config.lua file could contain something like this:

repositories = {
    "http://www.mypackage.org/rocks/"
 }

== Differently named Lua interpreters (e.g. LuaBinaries) ==

To use LuaRocks with the LuaBinaries distribution, pass the option
--lua-suffix=5.1 to "configure". This adds the given suffix to the 
default value of <code>lua_interpreter</code> in the configuration file.
If you want to use an alternative name to the interpreter, you can set
that variable in your configuration file directly.

== Next steps ==

Once LuaRocks is installed, learn more about [[Using LuaRocks|using LuaRocks]].

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