A manifest file describes files contained in a rocks tree or server. Each rocks tree or server has a manifest file in its root. Rocks servers may also have versioned manifests (e.g. manifest-5.1 for Lua 5.1) and compressed manifests (e.g. manifest-5.1.zip). These must match the contents of the uncompressed manifest.

Like a rockspec, a manifest file contains a Lua program setting several globals. Three of them are mandatory:

• repository: a table where each key is a package name and its value is a table describing versions of the package hosted on a server or installed in a rocks tree.
  • repository[package_name]: a table where each key is a package version (including revision, e.g. 1.0.0-1) and its value provides information for that version.
    • repository[package_name][package_version]: a list of tables containing several fields:
      • arch: architecture of the rock as a string. Always set to installed in rock tree manifests.
      • modules (only for rock tree manifests): a table mapping module names to paths under installation directory for Lua or C modules.
      • commands (only for rock tree manifests): a table mapping script names to paths under installation directory for binaries.
      • dependencies (only for rock tree manifests): a table mapping names of packages the rock depends on (perhaps indirectly) to versions of installed packages satisfying the dependency.
• modules: empty table in rock server manifests (may change in future releases). In rock tree manifests it's a table mapping module names to lists of packages and versions providing that module. Each value in the list is a string in module/version format (e.g. foo/1.0.0-1).
• commands: empty table in rock server manifests (may change in future releases). In rock tree manifests it's a table mapping script names to lists of packages and versions providing that script, using same format as modules table.
• dependencies (only for rock tree manifests): a table containing precomputed dependency information to be used by luarocks.loader. Each key is a package name.
  • dependencies[package_name]: A table where each key is a version (with revision) and its value describes dependencies of that version of the package.
    • dependencies[package_name][package_version]: An array of direct dependencies represented as tables with the following fields:
      • name: name of the rock that is depended on.
      • constraints: an array of parsed version constraints. Each constraint is represented as a table with fields:
        • op: an operator as a string (e.g. >=).
        • version: version to the right of the operator as an array of parts, e.g. {1, 0, 0} for 1.0.0. It also contains version as a string in string field and may contain revision in revision field.