Help needed with Lua scripts installation on Windows computer for darktable (resolved)

I had hoped getting lua working on my windows computer would be easy. But I have stuffed up big time.

  1. First I have a brand new Windows 11 computer. I installed DT V4.3 +1661
  2. DT showed the lua script manager in lighttable view, but there were no scripts available
    3.So I went to GitHub - darktable-org/lua-scripts and followed the instructions there (at least I hope I did) and first installed git for windows.
  3. I then opened a command prompt and run:
    cd LOCALAPPDATA\darktable
    git clone GitHub - darktable-org/lua-scripts lua
  4. This seemed to work
  5. I then opened DT and now the script manager is no longer visible in the lighttable view.

I have searched for answers on the web including this forum and I am at a total loss of what has gone wrong. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

What does your luarc file say? Its in the same folder as darktablerc

“require ‘tools/script_manager’”

If you launch DT from the command line with the option -d all what does it say?

I have done that but where is the text logged?

this may be the required log

8.2870 LUA ERROR : C:\Users\tpinf\AppData\Local\darktable\luarc:1: unexpected symbol near ‘“require ‘tools/script_manager’”’

My logs go here: C:\Users\"username"\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache\darktable
 but it looks like you’ve found yours maybe.

the log message shows 2 sets of double quotes after script manager. It should be a single quote, then a double quote.

I thought the whole point of the script manager was that you no longer have to clone the repo and mess with luarc. At least I didn’t do anything when I tried.

Terry, I’ve just repeated the installation on the Windows machine. I renamed C:\Users\my_user\AppData\Local\darktable to darktable.orig so it’s out of the way, and removed the cache C:\Users\my_user\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache\darktable. When I launch darktable (which I installed from a ‘Windows Insider’ build), I immediately get the lue scripts installer. No need to download, clone, or edit anything.
image

If it’s not visible for you, can you check the preferences?
image

After I clicked the execute, it cloned the git repo, and then the script manager showed up:
image

Opening that allows me to install scripts as I already described in the post I quoted above.

Thanks for all the replies. As the computer was new I took the sledge hammer approach. I deleted darktable and files that remained in the AppData location. I then reinstalled darktable and script manager was there. So all sorted now. The only obvious difference is that I had installed git and initially that was not installed. Is git required?

Yes – git is how the script manager can install and update scripts.

For the sake of others having similar problems and reading this post. Not having GIT installed was my problem. Is that correct?

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Seems so.

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