luarocks VS luarocks-build-xmake

LUA_INCDIR is not listed on either https://github.com/luarocks/luarocks/wiki/Installation-instructions-for-Unix or https://github.com/luarocks/luarocks/wiki/Installation-instructions-for-Unix but luarocks complains that it's not set. What does it do?

Luarocks packages (or "rocks") provide a rockspec, which luarocks uses to build the package and resolve dependencies.

The luarocks.loader module is provided by Luarocks and basically replace the standard require function by a version that handles Rocks installed with Luarocks (https://github.com/luarocks/luarocks/wiki/Using-LuaRocks#multiple-versions-using-the-luarocks-package-loader and https://github.com/luarocks/luarocks/blob/master/src/luarocks/loader.lua). Note that this is safer than your implementation since it "knows" the running Lua version and the corresponding Luarocks installed files. So it will automatically load modules at the correct version / path (without additional set_path and hard coded string).

I would reccomend you use luarocks for the project. It’s the “standard” package manager for lua, and supports building the C parts (using autotools). It also manages the dependencies for you!

What kinds of trouble? It looks like it's under active development https://github.com/luarocks/luarocks/commits/master ...have your troubles with it been specific enough things that you could post them in the issue queue?

what luarocks version are you running? If it is the one from luaForWindows, then I recommend upgrading it (https://github.com/luarocks/luarocks/wiki/Download). Solved my include problems but requires a bit of configration

Therefore, xmake provides luarocks=build-xmake plugin to use xmake to replace the built-in build system of luarocks. The replacement method is also very simple. You only need to buildin Change the build type to xmake and add the luarocks-build-xmake dependency.