ncurses in FreeBSD base

Description

This page describes my work on ncurses in the FreeBSD. The ultimate goals are 1) keeping ncurses update 2) enabling wide character support.

Issues

1. The building framework for ncurses (autotools based) makes the updating process a bit difficult. For example, files that should have been generated by configure are generated by some hard-coded rules in Makefile, say replacing variables by sed. This makes updating need more work (e.g., manually figure out which variables need to be replaced, put them into Makefile, etc.).
2. We used to use our own termcap.c in the tree rather than ncurses's read_termcap.c. This file was added 6 years ago when peter@ first imported ncurses to base. While updating I was told by Thomas Dickey that there are some ncurses internal changes between 5.4 and 5.5 that I have to apply the same changes to our termcap.c. This makes updating a little painful. On the other hand, the ncurses-specific glue in termcap.c is not much, and corresponding codes in read_termcap.c can be easily located.

Solutions

For issue #1, it seems unavoidable. So, I decide to keep it as is.

For issue #2, I think we just keep it as is. Since to maintain termcap.c does not really need much efforts.

Current Status

• 2009/10/28 a small fix for ee(1) and SIGWINCH committed to HEAD (9.x); merged to stable/8
• 2008/11/15 update ncurses to 5.7 in HEAD (8.x)
• 2008/05/09: update ncurses to 5.6 snapshot 20080503 in HEAD (8.x)

Files / Patches

Please follow the instructions at the beginning of the patch file. Then, do a full buildworld/installworld as Handbook says.

• ncurses 5.6 snapshot 20070901 for 6.x/7.x (should fix gnu/98975)

FreeBSD-specific Changes

These patches contain changes that made to contrib/ncurses. Note that the changes in lib_baudrate.c will be merged in ncurses 5.7 release.

• 8-CURRENT (as of Dec 22, 2007)
  • ncurses-5.7-fbsd-8.diff
• 7-CURRENT (as of Jan 06, 2007)
  • ncurses-5.6-fbsd-7.diff
• RELENG_6 (on 6.1-RELEASE)
  • ncurses-5.5-fbsd-6.diff

HOWTO update ncurses in the base

There is no easy way to update. Read the following files and proceed with extra care: src/contrib/ncurses/FREEBSD-upgrade and src/contrib/ncurses/FREEBSD-Xlist .

TODO

• Remove non-widec version (so readline picks up ncursesw, makes python happier)
• Install ncurses5-config

ports land

• x11/rxvt-unicode uses devel/ncurses for terminfo.
• Test ncurses version in base:

  .if ${OSVERSION} < 602107 || (${OSVERSION} > 700000 && ${OSVERSION} < 700033)
  LIB_DEPENDS+=	ncursesw.5:${PORTSDIR}/devel/ncurses
  .endif
        

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the following people who provided help or encouraged me to work on this (sorted by last name).

• Doug Barton (dougb@) for pointing out building framework of lib/bind
• Renato Botelho (garga@) for taking care of my devel/ncurses PR
• Thomas Dickey (current author of ncurses) for ncurses specific knowledge
• Ruslan Ermilov (ru@) for valuable Makefile suggestions
• Xin Li (delphij@) for knowledge on committing on src tree and reviewing my patches
• Pav Lucistnik (pav@) for the suggestion of installing two libraries once in ports, updating ports/base
• Alan Cheng-Lung Sung (clsung@) for encouraging me to work on this
• Jeroen Ruigrok/asmodai for letting me know ncurses status in DragonFlyBSD
• Li-Lun Wang for correcting my bad English
• Kuang-che Wu for how to build two libraries at once in ports
• Eric Yu for inspiring me to work on ncurses port

And people on IRC (#BSDChat on IRCNet, #BSDPorts on EFNet), my friends in real life.

About me

Please visit my page for more information. Or drop me a line at rafan@.

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