Installation ------------ luarocks build lzlib-git-1.rockspec Troubleshooting --------------- * Error: Could not find expected file libz.a, or libz.so, or libz.so.* for ZLIB -- you may have to install ZLIB in your system and/or pass ZLIB_DIR or ZLIB_LIBDIR to the luarocks command. Example: luarocks install lzlib ZLIB_DIR=/usr/local lzlib has a dependency on zlib, and currently (on Linux) LuaRocks checks .so file existence by searching for the file in two hardcoded paths, /usr/lib and /usr/local/lib. (instead of reading /etc/ld.so.conf) Try to locate libz.so, libz.a or libz.dll and re-run the command with ZLIB_LIBDIR=/path/to/libz.so. In my case on Ubuntu 12.04 : luarocks build --local lzlib-git-1.rockspec ZLIB_LIBDIR=/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/