[MacOS] rocks.nvim does not work after successful installation with luajit

[hpb0412]

I installed rocks.nvim using the recommended option at README.md

The installation is successful, no error.

I followed the instructions and put the generated code into ~/.config/nvim/init.lua

However, I cannot install any package. Ex:

:Rocks install kanagawa.nvim

return these errors in :Rocks log

[START][2024-06-15 16:04:23] rocks.nvim logging initiated
ERROR | 2024-06-15 16:04:25 | ....local/share/nvim/rocks/share/lua/5.1/rocks/luarocks.lua:64 | luarocks CLI FAILED
ERROR | 2024-06-15 16:04:25 | ....local/share/nvim/rocks/share/lua/5.1/rocks/luarocks.lua:65 | env: lua: No such file or directory

ERROR | 2024-06-15 16:04:25 | ....local/share/nvim/rocks/share/lua/5.1/rocks/luarocks.lua:64 | luarocks CLI FAILED
ERROR | 2024-06-15 16:04:25 | ....local/share/nvim/rocks/share/lua/5.1/rocks/luarocks.lua:65 | env: lua: No such file or directory

ERROR | 2024-06-15 16:04:25 | ....local/share/nvim/rocks/share/lua/5.1/rocks/luarocks.lua:64 | luarocks CLI FAILED
ERROR | 2024-06-15 16:04:25 | ....local/share/nvim/rocks/share/lua/5.1/rocks/luarocks.lua:65 | env: lua: No such file or directory

ERROR | 2024-06-15 16:07:47 | ....local/share/nvim/rocks/share/lua/5.1/rocks/luarocks.lua:64 | luarocks CLI FAILED
ERROR | 2024-06-15 16:07:47 | ....local/share/nvim/rocks/share/lua/5.1/rocks/luarocks.lua:65 | env: lua: No such file or directory

ERROR | 2024-06-15 16:08:09 | ....local/share/nvim/rocks/share/lua/5.1/rocks/luarocks.lua:64 | luarocks CLI FAILED
ERROR | 2024-06-15 16:08:09 | ....local/share/nvim/rocks/share/lua/5.1/rocks/luarocks.lua:65 | env: lua: No such file or directory

ERROR | 2024-06-15 16:08:09 | ...re/nvim/rocks/share/lua/5.1/rocks/operations/helpers.lua:69 | Failed to install kanagawa.nvim

and every time I open nvim, I got this error

Here is my environment

nvim -v
NVIM v0.10.0
Build type: Release
LuaJIT 2.1.171665647

luajit -v
LuaJIT 2.1.1716656478 -- Copyright (C) 2005-2023 Mike Pall. https://luajit.org/

git -v
git version 2.39.0

curl --version
curl 8.1.2 (x86_64-apple-darwin21.0) libcurl/8.1.2 (SecureTransport) LibreSSL/3.3.6 zlib/1.2.11 nghttp2/1.45.1
Release-Date: 2023-05-30
Protocols: dict file ftp ftps gopher gophers http https imap imaps ldap ldaps mqtt pop3 pop3s rtsp smb smbs smtp smtps telnet tftp
Features: alt-svc AsynchDNS GSS-API HSTS HTTP2 HTTPS-proxy IPv6 Kerberos Largefile libz MultiSSL NTLM NTLM_WB SPNEGO SSL threadsafe UnixSockets

:lua vim.fn.executable("luarocks") -- return 1

# :checkhealth

rocks: require("rocks.health").check()

Checking external dependencies ~
- OK luarocks: found 
- WARNING         lua: not found.
          Install [Lua](https://www.lua.org/) for extended capabilities.
          luarocks requires a Lua installation.
          

Checking rocks.nvim config ~
- OK No errors found in config.

Checking rocks.toml ~
- OK No errors found in rocks.toml.

[mrcjkb]

Hey 👋

As the health check and error messages indicate, luarocks expects a lua executable.
You have luajit installed, and from the looks of it, it doesn't have a lua alias or symlink.

[hpb0412]

Thank you for quick reply!

I thought I only need luajit since the readme mentioned:

A lua 5.1 or luajit installation (for luarocks).

And :lua vim.fn.executable("luarocks") returns 1 also supports that thought.

Anyway, let me install lua 5.1 and feedback later.

[mrcjkb]

Yep, luajit should work, but it needs to have a lua alias.

Unfortunately, vim.fn.executable("luarocks") returning 1 only indicates that an executable exists, but not that it works.

let me install lua 5.1 and feedback later.

This might not be possible on MacOS if you're using Homebrew.
But creating an alias lua luajit might be enough.

@craigmac you added the readme note about using luajit on MacOS.
Do you know if there's an extra step needed to create an alias?

[hpb0412]

@mrcjkb I tried both. Let me provide info here:

• I installed lua@5.4 using brew install lua => rocks.nvim works (at least basic functions, install, remove, sync)
• (Remove lua installed above) I set alias with alias lua=luajit => rocks.nvim does not work (with different msg):

which lua
lua: aliased to luajit

[hpb0412]

Also, small update:

From current status (remove lua, set alias => not work)

I remove the alias, reinstall lua but again I still get errors, no matter if I

• restart the terminal
• restart the machine

The only way to fix it is to remove these directories and reinstall the rocks.nvim

• ~/.local/share/nvim/rocks
• ~/.local/share/nvim/site/pack/luarocks

[mrcjkb]

It looks like you were running into #377, which should be fixed with the latest rocks.nvim release.

[hpb0412]

Another update:

I hope that lua@5.4 will work but it's failed when I try to install tree-sitter-{lang}.

I thought it was the end as you know brew has not allowed installing lua@5.1 from @craigmac's PR.

Fortunately, I have asdf to install lua@5.1 instead of brew. Now, rocks.nvim seems to work without glitches.

At this point, I guess if the alias solution was not working for me, it might not be because of missing steps, but because of version mismatching. Since lua must be at 5.1, then luajit should be at a specific version, right?

Anyway, I hope the above information will help others if they fall into this situation.

[craigmac]

Since, lua@51 has been disabled, you have two options, you can try the brew extract method which means you extract that disabled formula to your own 'tap' and install and maintain it yourself, it's a bit involved though. I opted instead to just download lua 5.1 and install it from source doing:

cd ~/Downloads
curl -O https://www.lua.org/ftp/lua-5.1.5.tar.gz
tar xvf lua-5.1.5.tar.gz
cd lua-5.1.5
make macosx
sudo make install

Will install into /usr/local/bin/lua where it will be found properly by rocks.nvim

[andrewcrook]

Don't forget builds will use the lua version available this sometimes hard codes packages etc to a specific version of lua.
So if you change the lua version your will have to reinstall in order to rebuild using the different lua version.

On a side note, I don't think lua5.1 and Luajit should be side by side (I have had several issues where things pickup the wrong version ) really you want to use one at a time in a shell, one of the other may be use some sort of shim script?

[mrcjkb]

Thanks for the input.

I have had several issues where things pickup the wrong version

Have you had these issues with neovim and/or rocks.nvim? Usually, Neovim comes bundled with a luajit interpreter, which should be able to run native Lua built against either luajit or Lua 5.1 headers.

To make sure luarocks doesn't pick up Lua > 5.1 (e.g. 5.4), rocks.nvim passes --lua-version 5.1 to the luarocks CLI.

[andrewcrook]

Have you had these issues with neovim and/or rocks.nvim
Only when using mason it was ignoring asdf and using luajit from homebrew
I removed the plugin from asdf and it started using lua 5.1 correctly. I am not sure what was causing it.
I use multiple versions with asdf but the lua and luajit plugins are broken and luajit one is out of date. I plan to rewrite them as one.

[mrcjkb]

Oh yeah, mason can be finicky.