Error: Failed finding Lua header files. You may need to install them or configure LUA_INCDIR. - Windows 10 with Lua distribution

[Cussa]

Hi,

I am using the distributed version of Lua 5.3. Based on the documentation, I could take the binary and use the luarocks.

So, I have a folder D:\lua\dist where I have both the lua53 binaries and the luarocks. This path is on the PATH variable too.

However, when I try to install something, I'm receiving the following error:

D:\lua\dist>luarocks install busted
Installing https://luarocks.org/busted-2.0.0-1.rockspec

Error: Failed finding Lua header files. You may need to install them or configure LUA_INCDIR.

When I ran the luarocks, this is the configuration that it presents:

Configuration:
   Lua:
      Version    : 5.3
      Interpreter: D:\lua\dist/luarocks.exe (ok)
      LUA_DIR    : D:\lua\dist (ok)
      LUA_BINDIR : D:\lua\dist (ok)
      LUA_INCDIR : D:\lua\dist (not found)
                   ****************************************
                   Use the command

                      luarocks config variables.LUA_INCDIR <dir>

                   to fix the location
                   ****************************************
      LUA_LIBDIR : D:\lua\dist (ok)

Can someone help me to figure out what is happening?

Thanks in advance.

[daurnimator]

@Cussa luarocks is trying to find the lua header files (i.e. lua.h, lauxlib.h, lualib.h, etc). You need to tell it the folder to find them in.

[ramkumarkb]

@Cussa - Not sure whether I understood your question clearly. On my Windows-10 environment, I have installation of Lua (compiled from source using the TDM-GCC and then binary installation of Lua-Rocks as per the instruction when Lua is already installed. Did I answer your question?

[Cussa]

HI @ramkumarkb. It seems that my problem was that I took the Binary version, while the Luarocks uses the "uncompiled" version. I "fixed" the issue removing everything from my machine and using a docker container 😅

[MAW016]

I solved this by installing lua-devel package on my linux machine. On windows you can try this: https://github.com/rjpcomputing/luaforwindows

[victorwestmann]

This command helped me change my error message! It seems to have worked to an extent:
luarocks-admin --lua-dir C:\lua LUA_INCDIR='C:/lua/include'

Now I'm just getting the error messages saying:

   Lua:
      Version    : 5.4
      Interpreter: C:\lua/lua54.exe (ok)
      LUA_DIR    : C:\lua (ok)
      LUA_BINDIR : C:\lua (ok)
      LUA_INCDIR : 'C:/lua/include' (ok)
      LUA_LIBDIR : C:\lua (ok)

   Configuration files:
      System  : C:/Program Files/luarocks/config-5.4.lua (not found)
      User    : C:/Users/victo/AppData/Roaming/luarocks/config-5.4.lua (not
      found)

   Rocks trees in use:
      C:\Users\victo\AppData\Roaming/luarocks ("user")

[The-oo]

I resolve this issue by install Lua dev version

sudo apt install liblua5.3-dev

from this link: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/54813206/error-failed-finding-lua-library-you-may-need-to-configure-lua-libdir

[geomorillo]

please provide an easy to install package