Compiling VLC on Linux: error cannot find Lua

Question

I am trying to compile VLC for Linux. When I run configure script, I get an error

configure: error: Could not find lua. Lua is required for some interfaces (rc, telnet, http), as well as many other user scripts. Use -disable-lua to ignore this error.

I have lua on my system. I ran lua -v and got

Lua 5.1.4 Copyright (C) 1994-2008 Lua.org, PUC-Rio

whereis lua gives

/usr/bin/lua/usr/lib/lua/usr/share/lua/usr/share/man/man1/lua.1.gz

Which looks standard. Any ideas on why configure is not building lua?

Answer 1

As Not_a_Golfer mentioned, you need Lua header / library files

Answer 2

In Debian based

$ apt-get install lua5.2 liblua5.2-dev 

Worked for me