Arch Linux

002445

Member

Registered: 2021-10-07

Posts: 38

highlight package missing liblua.so.5.5 on my system

Hi all,

I assume the answer is going to be to wait for an update of lua but maybe it might help to post here so here it goes.

I am using the package 'highlight' to do some syntax highlighting in my terminal. Currently when calling 'highlight' I get an error:

highlight: error while loading shared libraries: liblua.so.5.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I can see that 'highlight' was updated yesterday (from 4.19.1 to 4.19.2) and I can see that the installed and latest available lua is 5.4.8. lua is installed because it is a dependency for another package and highlight depends on the lua package.

Downgrading highlight to 4.19.1 solves the error for now. So adding all this together it seems to me that until lua5.5 is released highlight 4.19.2 will be broken.

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,695

Re: highlight package missing liblua.so.5.5 on my system

This is a packaging bug, it was built against lua in extra-staging and was supposed to stay in extra-staging. You should open an issue in Arch's gitlab.

Please note, there is no 4.19.1 and 4.19.2, it's 4.19-1 and 4.19-2; very, very different.

Last edited by Scimmia (2026-03-03 13:31:26)

002445

Member

Registered: 2021-10-07

Posts: 38

Re: highlight package missing liblua.so.5.5 on my system

Due to an influx of spam, we have had to temporarily disable account registrations. Please write an email to accountsupport@archlinux.org, with your desired username, if you want to get access. Sorry for the inconvenience.

I'll just stay on 4.19-1 until it fixes itself.

darkowlzz

Member

Registered: 2026-03-02

Posts: 1

Re: highlight package missing liblua.so.5.5 on my system

This has been fixed in 4.19-3, refer https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/ … -/issues/5 

I too encountered this recently but via gitweb which runs 'highlight' for syntax highlighting the code in the web UI.
I was suspecting it to be related to lighttpd until I came across this post with the exact error and it made me check the gitweb CGI perl script, where 'hightlight' is used.
Thanks for posting.