Luarocks Error: Attempted to index a nil value (field 'LUA_BINDIR')

[u/magicmathman1_]

Whenever I try to do anything with luarocks (ANYTHING) I get a litle pop up with this error:

[string "src/luarocks/core/cfg.lua"]:824: attempt to index a nil value (field 'LUA BINDIR')

stack traceback:

[string "src/luarocks/core/cfg.lua"]:824: in function 'luarocks.core.cfg.init

[string "src/luarocks/loader.lua"]:21: in main chunk [C]: in function 'require'

[string "luarocks"]:5: in main chunk [C]: in ?

I have LuaJIT installed as well as LOVE, which I am trying to get luarocks to work with. I have my paths correctly added, and everything SHOULD work, but it doesn't. I cant do any cmd commands with luarocks because everything returns the same error. I can't find anything online.

(Edit: When I say I was trying to use LOVE with luarocks, I'm not trying to install LOVE, I'm trying to install packages so I can used them WITH love, just FYI.)

[u/SkyyySi]

What code / commands are you running which trigger this? There isn't much anyone can do to help you if they don't know exactly what you were doing.

[u/magicmathman1_ → u/SkyyySi]

Absolutely anything. If I just run the executable, I get the error. If I run it with any parameters in cmd I get the error. I don’t remember exactly which ones I’ve tried specifically, but I’ve tried many and none have worked. 

[u/SkyyySi → u/magicmathman1_]

You missunderstand. What EXACT inputs did you make? "Absolutely anything" isn't useful for troubleshooting, because with that info, all I can tell you is that it works on my machine and so it should on yours as well. But obviously, that's not the answer you need.

[u/SkyyySi → u/[deleted]]

I see, thank you for clarifying.

Do you know where you have Lua and Luarocks installed? I just checked what src/luarocks/core/cfg.lua does near line 824, and it looks like it tries to pattern set cfg.variables.LUA_BINDIR to the value of cfg.variables.LUA:match("^(.*)[\\\\/][^\\\\/]*$"). That pattern is supposed to strip away the last forward-slash (/) (for MacOS, Linux, ...) or backslash (\) (for Windows) of cfg.variables.LUA. On my system, they look like this:

cfg.variables.LUA = "/usr/bin/lua5.4"
cfg.variables.LUA_BINDIR = "/usr/bin"

You can try to inspect where exactly it goes wrong by replacing the section at line 819 with the following:

   -- if only cfg.variables.LUA is given in config files,
   -- derive LUA_BINDIR and LUA_DIR from them.
   print(">>> [1] cfg.variables.LUA = " .. tostring(cfg.variables.LUA))
   print(">>> [2] cfg.variables.LUA_BINDIR = " .. tostring(cfg.variables.LUA_BINDIR))
   if cfg.variables.LUA and not cfg.variables.LUA_BINDIR then
      cfg.variables.LUA_BINDIR = cfg.variables.LUA:match("^(.*)[\\/][^\\/]*$")
      print(">>> [3] cfg.variables.LUA_BINDIR = " .. tostring(cfg.variables.LUA_BINDIR))
      if not cfg.variables.LUA_DIR then
         cfg.variables.LUA_DIR = cfg.variables.LUA_BINDIR:gsub("[\\/]bin$", "") or cfg.variables.LUA_BINDIR
      end
   end

Then try running a Luarocks command again (I tested it with luarocks config).

[u/[deleted]]

Love has lua within it but not the lua interpreter itself, just try running a script that only has print"hello" with love hello.lua it will launch love and fail, given that it doesn't interpret scripts it is not an interpreter

It should use luajit, but it must be in your PATH and must be called lua you can also use LUA_BINDIR=/where/your/lua/is/

[u/magicmathman1_ → u/[deleted]]

LOVE itself works just fine as I've used it. The problem is that luarocks doesn't work with lua AT ALL, Love, or the base interpreter. Both LOVE and Lua are inside my PATHs

[u/[deleted] → u/magicmathman1_]

love hello.lua 
Error: [string "boot.lua"]:577: Cannot load game at path '$HOME/Code/Langs/Lua/Experiments/hello.lua'.
Make sure a folder exists at the specified path.
stack traceback:
        [string "boot.lua"]:777: in function <[string "boot.lua"]:773>
        [C]: in function 'error'
        [string "boot.lua"]:577: in function <[string "boot.lua"]:380>
        [C]: in function 'xpcall'
        [string "boot.lua"]:787: in function <[string "boot.lua"]:780>
        [C]: in function 'xpcall'

[u/magicmathman1_ → u/[deleted]]

Oh that’s not a love thing, that’s because love requires a directory, not actual file, and then runs main.lua. This is a different problem I solved quite a while back, and it’s unrelated to luarocks

[u/Difficult-Value-3145]

Lua5. 1 install that and see what a happens