Improve Unclear Installation Instructions for Unix on Wiki - Include Major Package Managers

[GECORegulatory]

Hello,

I have been going through the installation instructions for Unix systems on the Github Wiki and I found that it does not include information about package managers such as apt/dnf. The current instructions focus on installing dependencies using these package managers, which could lead to confusion, especially those unfamiliar with package management in Unix-based systems. Typically, it is standard to include only build from source instructions if no other installation method is available. This is not the case anymore, and the documentation of luarocks should reflect this. The vast majority of users of luarocks do not need the additional functionality from building a bespoke configuration, so, in my opinion, this is an obvious choice to save user time and improve Lua Developer Experience, particularly for newer Lua devs.

I've confirmed that luarocks is indeed available on major package managers like apt, and while I can't say for certain it is on DNF, I would assume so given it's presence on rpmfind. Considering this, it would be helpful to provide instructions that include installing Luarocks through these package managers, in addition to the existing method.

This issue is low severity, as it only affects new installs.

Here's a proposed format:

Installing dependencies with apt/dnf (existing section)
Installing Luarocks with apt/dnf (new section)
Instructions for apt
Instructions for dnf (if verified)
[Additional sections for other distros/package managers]
Installing Luarocks manually (existing section)
Including these instructions would improve clarity and ease the installation process, especially for beginners.

Thanks for considering my suggestion.

[rotemhacks]

I would like to second this request, and also add that the instructions that are included right now are also out of date.

Not only do they specify an outdated tarball (it's easy to see that the latest at the current time of this writing is 3.9.2, and the instructions have you install 3.8.0), but also the --with-lua-include path is wrong and unnecessary (simply running configure ended up working for me).

(ETA: installing on Debian 12)

[hishamhm]

@GECORegulatory A major problem with recommending downstream packages first in the upstream documentation is that those packages are often out-of-date. The Ubuntu packages for LuaRocks have been a major version behind for several years, and they are still out-of-date (3.8.0 vs 3.9.2) at the time I'm writing this.

I think it's fair to assume users nowadays first attempt installing any package foobar by trying apt install foobar first and only go to the upstream documentation when they want to build from source.

But yes, we could have separate sections or pages for "Installing from distribution packages" and "Building from source".

Not only do they specify an outdated tarball (it's easy to see that the latest at the current time of this writing is 3.9.2, and the instructions have you install 3.8.0)

@rotemhacks Thanks for the heads up. This was contributed by the community, but hasn't been kept up to date. We shouldn't be keeping many places where the latest version number needs to be updated manually.

Unfortunately we had to shut down freely editing the wiki due to spam and GitHub does not provide a way for people to make pull requests to the wiki. This has come up recently, and the only solution I could think of was plain old patches by email.