Can't "make install" Lua Library

I'm coming to Apache Thrift with a background in mobile development and Torch CNNs so I apologize beforehand if this is a dumb question but I cannot build the Lua library.

In /lib/lua, when I try
sudo make install

I get the following error that
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -llualongnumber

I know that this error is because LD cannot find a .a or .so files, and I know that we are generating .la files in the makefile so I am confused about how to resolve this linkage issue. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you!