RE: Building Lua on Windows

[Thijs Schreijer <thijs@...>]

> > See http://www.thijsschreijer.nl/blog/?p=772
> >
> The author did not follow the correct instructions for installing
> prerequisites[1], in short having sh.exe in your path is a BAD idea for
> various reasons. The install instructions for LuaDist[2] should be easy
> enough if you want to build from source. You can also use the binary
> downloads from luadist.org[3].
> 

Peter is right, I did have that. But the quote above, at all, is a remark that fits with a unix-type-of-guy, even on a windows system (no offence to Peter). I happen to be a windows-type-of-guy on a windows system, so dependencies like that remember me of the DOS days.
There is a new effort trying to get stuff working out of the box, based on LuaDist, probably a gui and then some. That looks great, but isn't there yet. LuaDist bundles LuaRocks, but it doesn't work (steve already filed an issue for the missing config file), that was my main reason to drop LuaDist for now and switch back to LuaRocks again.

I found myself in the same situation as the OP, tired of LfW with outdated modules, non-functional/upgradeable LuaRocks, based on an old runtime. So I set out to do it from scratch and the post mentioned are my findings so far.

Any way, Lua on Windows is a PITA. Probably a short coming on my end, not being used to commandlines, makefiles, or stated otherwise a lazy, ignorant windows user (that even considers Visual Studio to be a fantastic product).


> Its also worth noting that LuaRocks will not install any external
> libraries so the selection of packages you can install on Windows is
> limited.

Didn't get that one... what do you mean with "external libraries". Do you mean in some cases it will build the Lua binding for a library, but not the underlying library itself?
Doesn't LuaDist only build the packages it has in its repo?

regards
Thijs