LuaRocks Integration

LRocket supports integration with the luarocks module manager and build system.

In order to enable compilation via lrocket, luarocks projects may add the ‘luarocks-build-lrocket’ module in the dependencies of their rockspec file. The module provides the lrocket build type, which invokes lrc to bundle and compile the project:

Example rockspec:

build = {
    type = 'lrocket',
    entrypoint = 'main.lua',
    output = 'bin/program' -- compiles into ./bin/program or 'bin/program.exe' on windows
},

dependencies = {
    'luarocks-build-lrocket'
}

Running the luarocks build command will now bundle and compile all code contained in the entrypoint main.lua and produce ./bin/program (or bin/program.exe on windows).

Naturally this will also include the code of all additional lua files and c modules required by the file:

> luarocks build

What about C-based rocks and static linking?

luarocks-build-lrocket configures the luarocks package manager to compile all newly installed packages or dependencies that contain C code into both, a shared library (.dll/.so) and a static archive (.a/.lib)!

This means any native package available on luarocks.org and supported by the mechanism* can be statically linked into the executable with no .dll/.so required.

If a native package is not supported, lrc will automatically fallback to using the .dll/.so instead. This can also be configured using the prefer_c_module_type rockspec build option (see the section below for a full list of available build options).

* The method is based on the lr-hooks framework and works on any package that uses the luarocks ‘builtin’ build system and is likely to work on packages using a Makefile.

rockspec Build Options

luarocks-build-lrocket generally translates all flags supported by lrc to rockspec options.

The current list of available build options can be found below:

Option	Description
`entrypoint`	required: Main lua file
`c_header_out`	Output filename of the companion C header
`c_module_name`	Name of the target C module (luaopen_)
`cflags`	Extra arguments to the C compiler
`debug` `'all'` `'project'` `'module'`	Add debugging information to the output file
`exclude`	Exclude given modules from search
`extra_modules`	Explicitly include the specified module
`fuzzy` default: `true`	Examine complex require statements when resolving modules
`keep_intermediate` default: `false`	Do not remove intermediate C code after compilation
`liblua_shared` default: `false`	Link against the dynamic variant of the Lua library
`link_sibling_deps` default: `true`	Resolve dynamic dependencies of statically linked lua modules by scanning equally named dynamic modules
`log_level` `'none'` `'error'` `'warn'` `'info'` `'debug'`	lrocket compiler: level of verbosity
`no_std_paths` default: `false`	Ignore standard Lua paths
`optimize` `'none'` `'speed'` `'size'`	Enable optimizations
`otype` `'executable'` `'shared'` `'lua'` `'executable-c'` `'shared-c'`	Output file format
`output`	Output filename
`prefer_c_module_type` `'dynamic'` `'static'` default: `'static'`	Choose preferred variant of Lua C modules
`windows_gui` default: `false`	Link with /SUBSYSTEM:WINDOWS (or -mwindows for MinGW)

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