LuaRocks installation guide for Windows 10 users

luarocks-installation-windows10.md

Via Windows Linux Subsystem (WSL)

The luarocks package can be installed on a Windows Linux Subsystem.

Once installed, to use it, use luarocks inside a WSL shell or wsl luarocks within a Windows shell.

wsl                             # Enter WSL shell (if installed and enabled)
sudo apt-get update             # Update package lists (otherwise luarocks may not be found)
sudo apt-get install luarocks   # Install luarocks

Limitation

Installed "rocks" will only be available within WSL, not Windows.

Due to this WSL may have issues with Windows paths. The command wsl wslpath <path> may help in select cases where a path conversion is needed.

Via Package Management Systems

Scoop

You can use scoop to install lua-for-windows which includes luarocks.

# Install Scoop (run in PowerShell)
iex (new-object net.webclient).downloadstring('https://get.scoop.sh')

# Windows Shell
scoop install lua-for-windows

Some rocks can be used within on the command line (like ldoc), they will not be within your %PATH%.

You can create a .cmd file in %USERPROFILE%\scoop\shims to work around this.

e.g.

:: Contents for "%USERPROFILE%\scoop\shims\ldoc.cmd"
@echo off
set LDOCPATH=%USERPROFILE%\scoop\apps\lua-for-windows\current\rocks\ldoc\1.4.6-2\bin\ldoc.lua
@lua "%LDOCPATH%" %*

Manual install

Refer to the offical instructions for more details.

I got
Couldn't find manifest for 'luarocks'.

Looks like it is now available within lua-for-windows, try scoop install lua-for-windows (updated instructions above too).

Any idea how to fix that?

~$ sudo apt-get install luarocks
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package luarocks

I fixed it this way:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install lua5.1

I am using lua 5.1

Ah yes I should've mentioned an sudo apt-get update may be needed. Added this to instructions