this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2025
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I've been trying to get luarocks to work on windows, and all it gives is cryptic gcc errors.

How does pip manage to work on most platforms without issues?

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 5 days ago (3 children)

I'm surprised to hear you say this because in all honesty, pip really sucks as far as package managers go. uv is a worthy replacement.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Today I learned about uv-package manager ; thanks!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

I think this is talking about basic functionality, eg. can you do basic stuff with a clean install without everything immediately breaking

There's a lot of programming tools that are primarily developed for and on linux, and "windows support" is an afterthought which will result in linux being a very frictionless experience but windows being a minefield of problems and requiring careful manual setup

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Compared to luarocks, pip is amazing.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Maybe so, but pip is years behind package managers like cargo. It really is not particularly good.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

Sure, and Luarocks is behind pip, and it really is particularly bad.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 days ago

It's a 17 year old tool in the world's most popular scripting language. It's effectively had billions of tests run against it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Pick a language like Perl, where some packages are written in C and some are written in pure Perl, and you'll get to experience the same cryptic GCC errors, sometimes. There's no secret to pip; many Python developers upload wheels with pre-compiled binaries, including Windows-compatible binaries, and so you don't have to run GCC because they already did it for you.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Thanks, this is the explanation I was looking for.

Also, lua is the same, packages are either written in c or pure lua.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 days ago (1 children)

If you're getting gcc errors it sounds like the package you're trying to install contains some c/c++ stuff that needs compiling.

A lot of python packages that rely on things written in c/c++ ship those precompiled, which might account for why it feels easier for you.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Sorry if it was unclear, I constantly get cryptic gcc errors using luarocks a package manager for lua. Its years behind pip.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

No, you were clear. That's what I understood you to mean.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

Ah, I'm the one who misread, sorry.

Yeah, compiling things from scratch is the norm for lua packages, making them really only work on linux.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago

Pip is amazing. It does somethings in seconds that take anaconda over an hour to do.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

pip cannot install some system dependencies your library might need. Windows is extra difficult sometimes, as the library might require some paths during installation, Linux is way easier for this kind of stuff. Either you use WSL, or you follow these instructions for Windows I found by googling https://github.com/luarocks/luarocks/blob/main/docs/installation_instructions_for_windows.md

I use Mint btw

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

The instructions don't work half the time.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

@irelephant do anyone care a thing about windoze? :O

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Lack of windows support for most luarocks modules has stopped me from writing a lot of stuff in lua.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

@irelephant lack of support of an "operating system" that shouldnt exist at all is actually a great thing! ;)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

most people are on windows, so if I make something, it should support that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

@irelephant it reminds me what my mother used to say all the time: "its not because most people are jumping into a hole that you have to as well" xD

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Who are you writing package for?

backend stuff need not run on Windows at all.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

I was thinking of making a simple SSG (Static Site Generator), and I wanted to make it in lua.
some other cli tools, like scraping scripts as well.