Cliff’s blog

LUA_PATH on OSX

Earlier today I was playing around with Lua and luarocks on my laptop (which happens to be a MacBook Pro). I thought maybe I’d try re-writing telechat in Lua with the LuaSocket package. After I’d installed Lua 5.1.4 via mac ports along with luarocks:

$ sudo port -v install lua luarocks

I installed LuaSocket.

$ sudo luarocks install luasocket

I was under the mistaken impression that when I tried to run some example code, the ENVIRONMENT would be setup and functioning properly. Unfortunately this was not the case:

$ lua
Lua 5.1.4  Copyright (C) 1994-2008 Lua.org, PUC-Rio

> require "sockets"
/opt/local/share/lua/5.1/luarocks/require.lua:256: module 'sockets' not found:
        no field package.preload['sockets']
        no file './sockets.lua'
        no file '/opt/local/share/lua/5.1/sockets.lua'
        no file '/opt/local/share/lua/5.1/sockets/init.lua'
        no file '/opt/local/lib/lua/5.1/sockets.lua'
        no file '/opt/local/lib/lua/5.1/sockets/init.lua'
        no file './sockets.so'
        no file '/opt/local/lib/lua/5.1/sockets.so'
        no file '/opt/local/lib/lua/5.1/loadall.so'
stack traceback:
        [C]: in function 'plain_require'
        /opt/local/share/lua/5.1/luarocks/require.lua:256: in function 'require'
        stdin:1: in main chunk
        [C]: ?

After some investigation I’d realized that the LUA_PATH wasn’t set up by the packages that were installed. Since I’d installed the LuaSocket package as the administrator (with the sudo command). I needed to include the system-wide path to the rocks libraries. I did this for my user only by editing my .kshrc file. If  I’d wanted to do the same thing in bash I could have used .bshrc or .bashrc. To do it for every user of the system I could have use /etc/profile and /etc/login.  In any case I put in this line:

export LUA_PATH="/opt/local/share/lua/5.1//?.lua;/opt/local/lib/luarocks/?.lua;;"

After that was included everything ran fine (don’t forget to reload your environment.

9 Responses to “LUA_PATH on OSX”

1. kishore says:

   November 20, 2009 at 4:37 pm

   lua: /usr/local/share/lua/5.1//soap/http.lua:7: module ‘luasocket’ not found:
   no field package.preload['luasocket']
   no file ‘/usr/local/share/lua/5.1//luasocket.lua’
   no file ‘/usr/share/lua/5.1/soap/luasocket.lua’
   no file ‘/usr/share/lua/5.1/socket/luasocket.lua’
   no file ‘./luasocket.lua’
   no file ‘/usr/local/share/lua/5.1/luasocket.lua’
   no file ‘/usr/local/share/lua/5.1/luasocket/init.lua’
   no file ‘/usr/local/lib/lua/5.1/luasocket.lua’
   no file ‘/usr/local/lib/lua/5.1/luasocket/init.lua’
   no file ‘/usr/local/lib/lua/5.1//luasocket.so’
   no file ‘/usr/local/lib/lua/5.1/socket/luasocket.so’
   no file ‘./luasocket.so’
   no file ‘/usr/local/lib/lua/5.1/luasocket.so’
   no file ‘/usr/local/lib/lua/5.1/loadall.so’
   stack traceback:
   [C]: in function ‘require’
   /usr/local/share/lua/5.1//soap/http.lua:7: in main chunk
   [C]: in function ‘require’
   calSer.lua:1: in main chunk
   [C]: ?
   I am getting this error even i followed the correct path

   Please get the solution so that i can work

   Thanks
   Kishore.
2. cliff says:

   November 21, 2009 at 3:49 pm

   What OS are you using? If you’re on OSX how did you install LUA; with macports, fink, or pkgsrc?

   I need more information before I can help you.
3. kishore says:

   November 25, 2009 at 8:27 am

   Thanks Cliff for the reply.

   I am using Mac OSX and i install LUA5.1.4 and using pkgsrc I installed.I followed the above solution you have mentioned for sockets it is working fine.

   But when I run test.lua file which comes from luasoap I am getting the error that

   ua: /usr/local/share/lua/5.1//soap/http.lua:7: module ‘luasocket’ not found:

   Please let me know the solutions it is urgent.

   Thanks,
   Kishore
4. cliff says:

   November 25, 2009 at 11:17 am

   Unfortunately luasoap wasn’t setup as a rocks package. The installation isn’t quite as straight forward as other packages. Without being on your box the best thing I can suggest is to try loading the test file with lua -lluasockets or make a copy of test.lua and modify it to explicitly set package.path. I know neither of these are ideal solutions but they should get you up an running without having to go back an forth with me asking you a million more question about your set up.

   If you can invoke lua -lluasockets with no problem then you should be able to get the test.lua script running with no problem.

   Best of luck, please let me know if there is something more I can do for you.
   btw.. you might want to ask in #lua on freenode (IRC). I’m often in there (gcw) and the people there are very knowledgeable.
5. kishore says:

   November 26, 2009 at 1:48 pm

   Hey Thanks,

   I need to know whether any examples are present for luasoap so that i can have a better understanding.

   Thanks,
   Kishore
6. cliff says:

   November 28, 2009 at 6:48 am

   Sorry I’ve never used luasoap before.. I’m sure that you can google examples or ask in either IRC or on the mailing list. Wish I could be of more help.
7. kishore says:

   November 30, 2009 at 9:28 am

   Hey thanks Cliff for the reply

   i found solution for the luasoap it is working fine here

   I worked on the link below to find the solution This link is help full

   http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2009-10/msg00548.html.

   Thanks & bye.
   Kishore
8. Gavin McKenzie says:

   February 17, 2010 at 1:26 am

   Have you been able to get lua-socket to run on Snow Leopard?
   I get symbol not found errors against the core.so shared library, and a good hour of Googling has not helped.
9. cliff says:

   February 18, 2010 at 3:49 am

   it’s been working for me with no problem. A few questions for you

   1) are you using the MacPorts installation
   2) if so did you go through the migration steps?
   3) are you using luarocks 1.x or 2.x?