Lua .gitignore template

luac.out is the default output name when you compile a script to bytecode with the standard compiler. Precompiled chunks load faster but they are tied to the interpreter version and the numeric format of the machine that produced them, so a chunk built on one platform can fail to load on another. Since the source is right there and compilation is instant, there is no reason to carry the output.

The rock rules cover *.rock, *.src.rock and *.zip.rock. These are the packaged formats the package manager produces: a source rock holds the sources plus the build recipe, a binary rock holds compiled output for a specific platform. They are release artefacts, published to a repository rather than committed alongside the sources they were built from.

lua_modules is the local dependency tree that gets created when you install into the project rather than system wide. It contains the full source of every dependency plus any compiled C extensions those dependencies needed, which are platform specific. The rockspec file is what makes it reproducible, and that is the file to track.

.luarocks is the per project configuration and cache directory the package manager writes alongside that tree, recording which tree to use and where the interpreter lives on this machine. Both are regenerated by a single install command, and both contain absolute paths that mean nothing on anyone else's computer, which is the usual reason a directory like this belongs outside version control.

Lua is usually embedded rather than run standalone, so the practical ignore file for a Lua project is often dominated by the host application. A game repository will need the engine's template, and a configuration heavy project may need nothing more than this plus an editor template.