unpack
luarocks unpack - Unpack the contents of a rock.
luarocks unpack [--force] {<rock> | <rockspec> | <name> [<version>]}
Unpacks the contents of a rock in a newly created directory under the current directory. Argument may be a rock file, a rockspec file, or the name of a rock/rockspec in a remote repository.
If --force is passed, files are unpacked even if the output directory already exists.
When a rock is given, LuaRocks creates a directory and extracts the contents of a rock inside it. If it is a .src.rock file, it also extracts the sources, and copies the rock's rockspec to the root of the sources directory, so that you can run luarocks make.
When a rockspec is given, LuaRocks creates a directory and then fetches and extracts the sources for the module inside it. It also copies the rockspec to the root of the sources directory.
When a binary rock is given, it just extracts the contents of the rock in the created directory for further inspection. To fetch the sources, you can run unpack again on the rockspec file that will be extracted from the binary rock.
When a name (and optionally a version) is given, LuaRocks tries to download a source rock or a rockspec from remote repositories, and then proceeds as if the obtained file was provided locally.
luarocks unpack luafilesystem 1.4.0
This fetches luafilesystem-1.4.0-1.src.rock from the remote repository and creates in the current directory a directory called luafilesystem-1.4.0-1 with the contents of the rock, including the LuaFileSystem sources unpacked. You will then be able to
go into the luafilesystem-1.4.0-1/luafilesystem-1.4.0 directory and run luarocks make.
luarocks unpack copas-1.1.1-1.rockspec
Assuming you have copas-1.1.1-1.rockspec in the current directory, this creates in the current directory a directory called copas-1.1.1-1 with the rockspec and the Copas sources unpacked. You will then be able to go into the copas-1.1.1-1/copas-1.1.1 directory and run luarocks make.
While the extracted directory names may look repetitive, note that the first directory is a directory in a LuaRocks "name-version-revision" format, and the second directory is the directory contained inside the sources archives, which may be in any format, and in some cases may not even exist.