windowsluazlibluarocks

How to install lua-zlib with LuaRocks on Windows?

I've written a program with Lua, in a Linux environment, and it uses the Lua module ZipWriter and its dependecies (lua-zlib and struct). I'm trying to release to Windows as well, but I'm having trouble building lua-zlib.

I'm using LuaRocks to install all other packages, with standard commands. So, to install lua-zlib, I just used > luarocks install lua-zlib, but of course it wouldn't work, as zlib itself wasn't installed, and lua-zlib is a binding to that library. 

Installing https://luarocks.org/lua-zlib-1.2-0.src.rock

Error: Could not find header file for ZLIB
  No file zlib.h in c:/external/include
  No file zlib.h in c:/mingw/include
  No file zlib.h in c:/windows/system32/include
You may have to install ZLIB in your system and/or pass ZLIB_DIR or ZLIB_INCDIR to the luarocks command.
Example: luarocks install lua-zlib ZLIB_DIR=/usr/local

So, I found a link in that page for different downloads of zlib for Windows. I downloaded both the "Complete package, except sources" and "Sources" Setups, installed them, and they created folders and files under the directory C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32, all related to zlib. I followed the example provided by that error log and tried running luarocks again:

> luarocks install lua-zlib ZLIB_DIR="C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32"

But again, another error:

Installing https://luarocks.org/lua-zlib-1.2-0.src.rock

mingw32-gcc -O2 -c -o lua_zlib.o -IC:\lua\luajit lua_zlib.c -DLZLIB_COMPAT -IC:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32/include
mingw32-gcc -shared -o zlib.dll lua_zlib.o -lC:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32/zlib C:\lua\luajit/lua51.dll -lMSVCRT
c:/mingw/bin/../lib/gcc/mingw32/8.2.0/../../../../mingw32/bin/ld.exe: cannot find -lC:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32/zlib
collect2.exe: error: ld returned 1 exit status

Error: Build error: Failed compiling module zlib.dll

And indeed, there was no file/directory in C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32/zlib, as the error shows. For some reason, that was not installed. What am I missing?

Note: as the error log shows, I have mingw32-gcc as the compiler, in case this is useful.

Solution

  • It should work using a static zlib instead. To do so, you can follow this guide on Github. Basically, you need

    1. Functional zlib library installed
      Download from https://zlib.net , use cmake to generate Visual Studio solution (e.g. in c:\lib\zlib)

      cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=c:\lib\zlib

      then build the INSTALL project from the resulting solution, using 'Release' build type in VS.

    2. Download luarock lua-zlib: 

      mkdir c:\lib\lua-zlib
c:
cd \lib\lua-zlib
luarocks download lua-zlib

    3. Edit your lua-zlib*.rockspec file (e.g. in c:\lib\lua-zlib), add , "ZLIB_STATIC" to build.modules.zlib.defines, change platform.windows.modules.zlib.libraries from "$(ZLIB_LIBDIR)/zlib" to "$(ZLIB_LIBDIR)/zlibstatic"

    4. Install the luarock from local source (change the filename to match the existing one):

      cd c:\lib\lua-zlib 
luarocks install lua-zlib*.rockspec