diff --git a/maintainers/scripts/luarocks-packages.csv b/maintainers/scripts/luarocks-packages.csv
index 083470054eab..16f982601bb8 100644
--- a/maintainers/scripts/luarocks-packages.csv
+++ b/maintainers/scripts/luarocks-packages.csv
@@ -100,7 +100,6 @@ penlight,https://github.com/lunarmodules/Penlight.git,,,,,alerque
 plenary.nvim,https://github.com/nvim-lua/plenary.nvim.git,,,,5.1,
 rapidjson,https://github.com/xpol/lua-rapidjson.git,,,,,
 rest.nvim,,,,,5.1,teto
-readline,,,,,,
 say,https://github.com/Olivine-Labs/say.git,,,,,
 serpent,,,,,,lockejan
 sqlite,,,,,,
diff --git a/pkgs/development/lua-modules/overrides.nix b/pkgs/development/lua-modules/overrides.nix
index 62d4e066e50b..bd24eb501670 100644
--- a/pkgs/development/lua-modules/overrides.nix
+++ b/pkgs/development/lua-modules/overrides.nix
@@ -322,7 +322,7 @@ with prev;
     externalDeps = [
       { name = "EVENT"; dep = libevent; }
     ];
-    disabled = luaOlder "5.1" || luaAtLeast "5.4";
+    meta.broken = luaOlder "5.1" || luaAtLeast "5.4";
   });
 
   luaexpat = prev.luaexpat.overrideAttrs (_: {
@@ -514,8 +514,21 @@ with prev;
     '';
   });
 
-  readline = prev.readline.overrideAttrs (oa: {
-    propagatedBuildInputs = oa.propagatedBuildInputs ++ [ readline.out ];
+  readline = final.callPackage({ buildLuarocksPackage, fetchurl, luaAtLeast, luaOlder, lua, luaposix }:
+  buildLuarocksPackage ({
+    pname = "readline";
+    version = "3.2-0";
+    knownRockspec = (fetchurl {
+      url    = "mirror://luarocks/readline-3.2-0.rockspec";
+      sha256 = "1r0sgisxm4xd1r6i053iibxh30j7j3rcj4wwkd8rzkj8nln20z24";
+    }).outPath;
+    src = fetchurl {
+      # the rockspec url doesn't work because 'www.' is not covered by the certificate so
+      # I manually removed the 'www' prefix here
+      url    = "http://pjb.com.au/comp/lua/readline-3.2.tar.gz";
+      sha256 = "1mk9algpsvyqwhnq7jlw4cgmfzj30l7n2r6ak4qxgdxgc39f48k4";
+    };
+
     extraVariables = rec {
       READLINE_INCDIR = "${readline.dev}/include";
       HISTORY_INCDIR = READLINE_INCDIR;
@@ -524,9 +537,19 @@ with prev;
       unzip "$curSrc"
       tar xf *.tar.gz
     '';
-    # Without this, source root is wrongly set to ./readline-2.6/doc
-    sourceRoot = "readline-${lib.versions.majorMinor oa.version}";
-  });
+
+    disabled = (luaOlder "5.1") || (luaAtLeast "5.5");
+    propagatedBuildInputs = [ lua luaposix
+      readline.out
+    ];
+
+    meta = {
+      homepage = "http://pjb.com.au/comp/lua/readline.html";
+      description = "Interface to the readline library";
+      license.fullName = "MIT/X11";
+    };
+  })) {};
+
 
   sqlite = prev.sqlite.overrideAttrs (drv: {