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+# Hosting binary rocks
+
+At the moment, LuaRocks.org hosts only rockspecs and src.rock files, and not
+binary rocks. But you can host your own repository of binary rocks at any
+static HTTP server (for example, Github Pages).
+
+Suppose you want to host a binary rock for a rock of yours named `my_rock`:
+
+Step 1: build your rocks with `luarocks build my_rock`. This will compile your
+rocks locally in your system. After a successful build, you should see them
+installed with `luarocks list`.
+
+Step 2: create binary rocks from using `luarocks pack my_rock`. This will
+create a binary rock file, named after your operating system and processor,
+for example, `my_rock-1.0-1-macosx-x86_64.rock`. Note that this binary is
+dependent on library versions of your own machine. This is more of an issue in
+some operating systems than others (Linux binaries are very picky with library
+dependencies, so it's helpful to build binaries on older distros for greater
+compatibility.)
+
+Step 2.5: if your rock has dependencies, repeat step 2 for them as well.
+
+Step 3: create a new directory `my_dir`, copy your rock binary into it (and
+possibly your rockspec and src.rock as well, for a nice one-stop-shop of your
+rock) and run `luarocks-admin make-manifest my_dir`. This will create files
+named `manifest-*` in it, which turn this directory into a working LuaRocks
+server. You can even use it locally: `luarocks install --server=my_dir
+my_rock` should work!
+
+Step 4: upload the contents of `my_dir`, manifest files and rocks, into a HTTP
+server and use its URL as the argument of `--server`. For example, if you
+uploaded it into `http://example.com/binary-rock/manifest-5.3` and
+`http://example.com/binary-rock/my-rock-1.0-1-macosx-x86_64.rock`, then using
+`luarocks install --server=http://example.com/binary-rock my_rock` should
+fetch the manifest, read it, find the rock name, download it and install it.
+
+Note that in a repo that contains both binary and source rocks, running
+`luarocks install http://example.com/binary-rock my_rock` will download and
+install the binary rock, and  `luarocks build http://example.com/binary-rock
+my_rock` will download, compile and install the source rock.
+