Re: ANN: ncurses-6.4-20231125

[Thomas Dickey]

On Thu, Nov 30, 2023 at 09:30:32PM -0500, Dennis Clarke wrote:
> On 11/30/23 20:32, Thomas Dickey wrote:
> > On Thu, Nov 30, 2023 at 07:44:45PM -0500, Dennis Clarke via Bug reports
> for ncurses, the GNU implementation of curses wrote:
> >> On 11/25/23 19:08, Thomas Dickey wrote:
> >>> Files:
> ...
> >> Dear Sir :
> >>
> >>      I see these messages in my email fairly often. I admire the endless
> >> maintenance and work that it takes to support a critical library such as
> >> ncurses. I am left with a question, something on my mind for some years
> >> now, is there a page or document somewhere that explains how to build a
> >> good result from these sources? I am going with a guess that a trivial
> >> good ol fashioned "./configure --prefix=$SOMEPLACE" would get the job
> >> done. However I am just not sure about that.
> >
> > That's a starting point (which produces static libraries by default).
> >
> > The INSTALL file in the sources lists all of the configure options.
> > I've a web-browsable version of that here:
> >
>     Thank you for the reply. I was just reading through the INSTALL file
> from the source tarball and it seemed fairly clear to me that I could
> just easily do this :
> 
> e#
> e# ./configure --prefix=/opt/bw --with-shared
> checking for ggrep... no
> checking for grep... grep
> checking for egrep... grep -E
> Configuring NCURSES 6.4 ABI 6 (Fri Dec  1 00:54:37 GMT 2023)
> checking for package version... 6.4
> checking for package patch date... 20231125
> checking build system type... x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
> checking host system type... x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
> checking target system type... x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
> Configuring for linux-gnu
> .
> .
> .
> 
> That seems to work like a charm and the compile results in a library for
> wide char support :
> 
>     ./lib/libncursesw.so.6.4
> 
> Then I took a look inside the test directory and gave that a trivial
> ./configure and make.

The test/configure script is intended for use with the separate tarball
"ncurses-examples".

        https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses-examples.html

By default, the top-level configure script sets up a makefile in the
test directory, and the result usually works okay (the test programs
default to using rpath in the build-tree when you do this).

> So now I have hanoi linked against the wrong libs :
> 
> e#
> e# ldd hanoi
>         linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007fffb85e1000)
>         libncurses.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libncurses.so.6
> (0x00007fc658be3000)
>         libtinfo.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libtinfo.so.6
> (0x00007fc658bb0000)
>         libm.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 (0x00007fc658ad1000)
>         libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007fc6588f0000)
>         /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007fc658c16000)
> e#
> 
> 
> > Most people use packages that others have built
> Something I have plenty of experience with. However I thought it would
> be a good idea to try my own toolchain and get the latest ncurses etc.
> This has been a real source of education again.
> 
> > replacing ncurses on
> > your machine can be a source of pain if it's not done right because the
> > shell is likely to depend upon it.
> 
> My objective is to have a toolchain under /opt/bw that contains most of
> the essential bits I need. That means a new bash shell which will be
> built after I have readline and ncurses taken care of. I already have
> the GCC compiler and a pile of other things built and isolated into that
> directory tree.
> 
> I get the feeling that I need to install the new ncurses *before* trying
> any of the test code bits. That would sort out the location of the libs
> and with -Wl,-rpath=/opt/bw/lib,--enable-new-dtags I should have a
> decent RPATH in the output ELF files. What bothers me is the terminfo
> database and how that is involved.

The configure script lets you specify the defaults for $TERMINFO and
$TERMINFO_DIRS, so that it's possible to configure ncurses's $TERMINFO
in some other location than the system's terminal database - and with
$TERMINFO_DIRS, to use the system's terminal database as a fallback.

        --with-default-terminfo-dir
        --with-terminfo-dirs

For Solaris, the terminfo format is good enough to do this, AIX and HPUX
can be accommodated using the --with-caps option.  Doing that, those systems
can use some of the terminal descriptions in ncurses (except for the
extended number ones).

> I am thinking that a trivial guide somewhere would be helpful. If one
> decides to build ncurses and readline and also create a new terminfo
> database ( directory set ) for an isolated new shell. A shell that has
> nothing to do with some package built in some repo from Debian ( or
> RedHat etc ) with the added benefit that all of this is able to be
> debug single stepped along with gdb if desired.
> 
> I will install the new ncurses ( wide? ) and see what happens next.
> 
> Dennis Clarke
> RISC-V/SPARC/PPC/ARM/CISC
> UNIX and Linux spoken
> 
> 

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey <dickey@invisible-island.net>
https://invisible-island.net

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