luarocks / luarocks/luarocks

Important information missing from the Windows installation instructions.

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windows
Dominant language
Lua
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Description

I was able to get luarocks to work nicely with a self-compiled lua binary under Linux.

However, I can't make sense of the [Windows installation instructions](https://github.com/luarocks/luarocks/wiki/Installation-instructions-for-Windows).

The first instruction is to get the the latest "win32.zip" from http://luarocks.github.io/luarocks/releases/.

This seems to be the "legacy Windows package" which "includes Lua 5.1". The installation instructions seem to apply to this package. There is also a (confusingly named) "windows-32.zip" which is the "luarocks.exe stand-alone Windows binary". How is one supposed to use this one?

I'm interested in working with Lua 5.3 (and perhaps later with older or newer versions of Lua, or maybe even luajit), and not with Lua 5.1 as bundled in the "legacy Windows package".

There seem to be various binary distributions of Lua 5.3, for example from [Lua Builds](https://joedf.ahkscript.org/LuaBuilds/), or [luabinaries](http://luabinaries.sourceforge.net/). There is also [LuaDist](http://luadist.org/) which seems to overlap in scope with LuaRocks.

I guess that if I want to use binary modules, I will also need to setup a C compiler such as mingw, or Visual Studio, or does LuaRocks provide precompiled packages?

I'm quite puzzled by this. What are the actual options, and what are the pros and cons?

Since a typical Windows does not come with development tools preinstalled, there are various sources of Lua binaries, and Lua can be compiled directly from source, my guess is that there must be multiple ways to use LuaRocks on Windows. Yet there is no information on the supported combinations and how to configure LuaRocks in each case.

Contributor guide

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with the linked Windows installation instructions and compare them with the win32.zip and windows-32.zip artifacts listed on the releases page. Document the supported Lua and LuaJIT combinations, configuration options, compiler requirements, and how each package is used; done means a newcomer can choose and configure an appropriate Windows setup.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
lua
Domain
documentation
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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