Re: [ANN] Lua for Linux, alpha release

[Hisham <hisham.hm@...>]

On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 10:07 PM, Miles Bader<miles@gnu.org> wrote:
> Wesley Smith <wesley.hoke@gmail.com> writes:
>> Anyway, I don't think the Linux packaging systems (I'm speaking form
>> experience on Ubuntu here) are very good for things that change
>> rapidly.
>
> Of course anything that requires a separate packaging step is going to
> introduce some extra delay (an "everything included" giant blob is far
> worse in this respect, of course).
>
> Is luarocks any better in this regard (I've never used it)?  Can it
> seamlessly construct and install a "rock" from a package's source repo?

Yes, LuaRocks can build and install from source or from a pre-packaged
rock. All it needs is a rockspec file (a Makefile of sorts). It can be
fed a rockspec in the command-line or it can be auto-pulled from the
repository: for example, type "luarocks build luasocket" to build the
latest LuaSocket or "luarocks install luasocket" to fetch and install
the prebuilt rock (provided it's available for your platform -- we
provide binaries for a number of Kepler rocks on Windows -- if not
available, "install" falls back to "build" (usual behavior on Unix) ).

-- Hisham