Virtual packages like 'lua' can't be removed - Raspberry Pi - lua

Question

Overtime I’ve managed to install various versions of Lua, but not being the best at all thing Debian/pi, and after using Lua rocks to install the Lua file system (lfs) module I’ve got more versions (somewhere in my system) that I can shake a stick at.
What can I do to completely remove Lua and start again, this time ensuring is have the lfs module ?
Currently everything I do to try and uninstall/ remove comes to a dead end - usually with the virtual package message..
pi#raspberrypi:~ $ lua -v
Lua 5.2.3 Copyright (C) 1994-2013 Lua.org, PUC-Ri0
pi#raspberrypi:~ $ sudo apt-cache depends lua
<lua>
pi#raspberrypi:~ $ sudo apt-get purge lua
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Virtual packages like 'lua' can't be removed
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 36 not upgraded.
pi#raspberrypi:~ $ sudo apt-get remove lua
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Virtual packages like 'lua' can't be removed
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 36 not upgraded.
pi#raspberrypi:~ $ luarocks --version
/usr/bin/luarocks 2.2.0
LuaRocks main command-line interface

Answer 1

Many of your apt packages are going to run into complications of system components relying on those being there. They hardly take up any space anyway, just a couple meg. Ones you can safely remove will be listed under:
apt list lua-* | grep installed
If you've installed supplemental versions with luaver, then it's
luaver list
==> Installed versions: (currently 5.3.5)
5.1.5
5.3.5
5.4.0
5.2.4
luaver uninstall 5.4.0
so on and so forth, until all the unnecessary vers are off your system. Alternatively, you could delete your entire ~/.luaver/ directory, and all of those extra versions would be gone in one go. Then you'd have to reinstall luaver and continue from that point.