It's really pretty rough compared to everything else I've used. I really don't feel like luarocks solves very many of my problems. A lot of gaps in there, or libraries that only target 5.1, or only luajit. Or are completely unmaintained, or have poorly documented dependencies on C libraries. etc etc.

I use lua a lot and like it fine but the build/dependency/tooling situation is a fucking mess. It exposes you to a lot of the inconvenience of C in the end.