Lua Packaging Guidelines
What is Lua?
As described on the Lua website, Lua is
"Lua is a powerful, efficient, lightweight, embeddable scripting language. It supports procedural programming, object-oriented programming, functional programming, data-driven programming, and data description."
To learn Lua, read Programming in Lua.
Spec Template for a Lua Package
Many Lua packages use Lua-rocks for packaging. It is helpful to examine the .rockspec specification as a guide in writing your spec file. Some packages require compilation of C programs, but others may be pure Lua. Both will have very similar install locations.
Summary: Lua integration with libev
Name: lua-ev
License: MIT
Version: 1.5
Release: 2%{?dist}
URL: https://github.com/brimworks/lua-ev
Source0: %{url}/archive/v%{version}/%{name}-%{version}.tar.gz
BuildRequires: cmake
BuildRequires: gcc
BuildRequires: libev-devel
BuildRequires: lua-devel
%description
Event loop programming with Lua.
%prep
%autosetup -n %{name}-%{version}
%build
%cmake -DINSTALL_CMOD=%{lua_libdir}
%cmake_build
%install
%cmake_install
%check
#packaged tests do not work directly
#Use example program as a smoke test
LUA_CPATH=%{buildroot}%{lua_libdir}/?.so \
lua example.lua
LUA_CPATH=%{buildroot}%{lua_libdir}/?.so \
lua -e 'ev = require "ev"; print(ev.version())'
%files
%license README
%doc example.lua
%{lua_libdir}/ev.so
%changelog
* Thu Dec 08 2022 Benson Muite <benson_muite@emailplus.org> - 1.5-1
- Use README as license
* Sat Nov 19 2022 Benson Muite <benson_muite@emailplus.org> - 1.5-2
- Fix install location based on review
- Add further smoke test
* Wed Nov 16 2022 Benson Muite <benson_muite@emailplus.org> - 1.5-1
- Initial release
Naming
Lua add-on packages generally follow the naming scheme of lua-modulename — e.g. lua-filesystem, lua-lpeg, lua-moonscript. If the module name makes it clear that it is an add-on for Lua, though, the module name itself is sufficient. e.g. lutok.
Use your judgement — e.g. the second l in lua-lpeg already stands for Lua, but it might not be seen as unambiguous enough.
Macros
The following macros for packaging lua extensions are provided by the lua-devel package:
| Macro | Description |
|---|---|
|
version of system installed lua |
|
installation directory for compiled modules |
|
installation directory for arch-independent modules |
|
declares the needed runtime dependencies for the binary package |
For EPEL, define the following macros at the top of your spec file:
%{!?lua_version: %global lua_version %{lua: print(string.sub(_VERSION, 5))}}
# for compiled modules
%{!?lua_libdir: %global lua_libdir %{_libdir}/lua/%{lua_version}}
# for arch-independent modules
%{!?lua_pkgdir: %global lua_pkgdir %{_datadir}/lua/%{lua_version}}
To make the package pull the correct runtime dependencies, declare them like this:
Requires: lua >= %{lua_version}
Requires: lua < %{lua: os.setlocale('C'); print(string.sub(_VERSION, 5) + 0.1)}
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