1 -- $Id: INSTALL,v 1.46 2000/10/14 17:57:02 Johnny.C.Lam Exp $
2 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
3 How to install Ncurses/Terminfo on your system
4 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
6 ************************************************************
7 * READ ALL OF THIS FILE BEFORE YOU TRY TO INSTALL NCURSES. *
8 ************************************************************
10 You should be reading the file INSTALL in a directory called ncurses-d.d, where
11 d.d is the current version number. There should be several subdirectories,
12 including `c++', `form', `man', `menu', 'misc', `ncurses', `panel', `progs',
13 and `test'. See the README file for a roadmap to the package.
15 If you are a Linux or FreeBSD or NetBSD distribution integrator or packager,
16 please read and act on the section titled IF YOU ARE A SYSTEM INTEGRATOR
19 If you are converting from BSD curses and do not have root access, be sure
20 to read the BSD CONVERSION NOTES section below.
22 If you are using a version of XFree86 xterm older than 3.1.2F, see the section
23 on RECENT XTERM VERSIONS below.
25 If you are trying to build GNU Emacs using ncurses for terminal support,
26 read the USING NCURSES WITH EMACS section below.
28 If you are trying to build applications using gpm with ncurses,
29 read the USING NCURSES WITH GPM section below.
31 If you are running over the Andrew File System see the note below on
32 USING NCURSES WITH AFS.
34 If you are cross-compiling, see the note below on BUILDING NCURSES WITH A
37 If you want to build the Ada95 binding, go to the Ada95 directory and
38 follow the instructions there. The Ada95 binding is not covered below.
40 If you are using anything but (a) Linux, or (b) one of the 4.4BSD-based
41 i386 Unixes, go read the Portability section in the TO-DO file before you
48 You will need the following in order to build and install ncurses under UNIX:
50 * ANSI C compiler (gcc is recommended)
52 * awk (mawk or gawk will do)
54 * BSD or System V style install (a script is enclosed)
56 Ncurses has been also built in the OS/2 EMX environment.
59 INSTALLATION PROCEDURE:
60 ----------------------
62 1. First, decide whether you want ncurses to replace your existing library (in
63 which case you'll need super-user privileges) or be installed in parallel
66 The --prefix option to configure changes the root directory for installing
67 ncurses. The default is in subdirectories of /usr/local. Use
68 --prefix=/usr to replace your default curses distribution. This is the
69 default for Linux and BSD/OS users.
71 The package gets installed beneath the --prefix directory as follows:
73 In $(prefix)/bin: tic, infocmp, captoinfo, tset,
74 reset, clear, tput, toe
75 In $(prefix)/lib: libncurses*.* libcurses.a
76 In $(prefix)/share/terminfo: compiled terminal descriptions
77 In $(prefix)/include: C header files
78 Under $(prefix)/man: the manual pages
80 Note however that the configure script attempts to locate previous
81 installation of ncurses, and will set the default prefix according to where
82 it finds the ncurses headers.
84 2. Type `./configure' in the top-level directory of the distribution to
85 configure ncurses for your operating system and create the Makefiles.
86 Besides --prefix, various configuration options are available to customize
87 the installation; use `./configure --help' to list the available options.
89 If your operating system is not supported, read the PORTABILITY section in
90 the file ncurses/README for information on how to create a configuration
93 The `configure' script generates makefile rules for one or more object
94 models and their associated libraries:
98 libcurses.a (normal, a link to libncurses.a)
99 This gets left out if you configure with --disable-overwrite.
101 libncurses.so (shared)
103 libncurses_g.a (debug)
105 libncurses_p.a (profile)
107 libncurses.la (libtool)
109 If you do not specify any models, the normal and debug libraries will be
110 configured. Typing `configure' with no arguments is equivalent to:
112 ./configure --with-normal --with-debug --enable-overwrite
116 ./configure --with-shared
118 makes the shared libraries the default, resulting in
120 ./configure --with-shared --with-normal --with-debug --enable-overwrite
122 If you want only shared libraries, type
124 ./configure --with-shared --without-normal --without-debug
126 Rules for generating shared libraries are highly dependent upon the choice
127 of host system and compiler. We've been testing shared libraries on Linux
128 and SunOS with gcc, but more work needs to be done to make shared libraries
129 work on other systems.
131 If you have libtool installed, you can type
133 ./configure --with-libtool
135 to generate the appropriate static and/or shared libraries for your
136 platform using libtool.
138 You can make curses and terminfo fall back to an existing file of termcap
139 definitions by configuring with --enable-termcap. If you do this, the
140 library will search /etc/termcap before the terminfo database, and will
141 also interpret the contents of the TERM environment variable. See the
142 section BSD CONVERSION NOTES below.
144 3. Type `make'. Ignore any warnings, no error messages should be produced.
145 This should compile the ncurses library, the terminfo compiler tic(1),
146 captoinfo(1), infocmp(1), toe(1), clear(1) tset(1), reset(1), and tput(1)
147 programs (see the manual pages for explanation of what they do), some test
148 programs, and the panels, menus, and forms libraries.
150 4. Run ncurses and several other test programs in the test directory to
151 verify that ncurses functions correctly before doing an install that
152 may overwrite system files. Read the file test/README for details on
155 NOTE: You must have installed the terminfo database, or set the
156 environment variable $TERMINFO to point to a SVr4-compatible terminfo
157 database before running the test programs. Not all vendors' terminfo
158 databases are SVr4-compatible, but most seem to be. Exceptions include
159 DEC's Digital Unix (formerly known as OSF/1).
161 The ncurses program is designed specifically to test the ncurses library.
162 You can use it to verify that the screen highlights work correctly, that
163 cursor addressing and window scrolling works OK, etc.
165 5. Once you've tested, you can type `make install' to install libraries,
166 the programs, the terminfo database and the manual pages. Alternately, you
167 can type `make install' in each directory you want to install. In the
168 top-level directory, you can do a partial install using these commands:
170 'make install.progs' installs tic, infocmp, etc...
171 'make install.includes' installs the headers.
172 'make install.libs' installs the libraries (and the headers).
173 'make install.data' installs the terminfo data. (Note: `tic' must
174 be installed before the terminfo data can be
176 'make install.man' installs the manual pages.
178 ############################################################################
179 # CAVEAT EMPTOR: `install.data' run as root will NUKE any existing #
180 # terminfo database. If you have any custom or unusual entries SAVE them #
181 # before you install ncurses. I have a file called terminfo.custom for #
182 # this purpose. Don't forget to run tic on the file once you're done. #
183 ############################################################################
185 The terminfo(5) manual page must be preprocessed with tbl(1) before
186 being formatted by nroff(1). Modern man(1) implementations tend to do
187 this by default, but you may want to look at your version's manual page
188 to be sure. You may also install the manual pages after preprocessing
189 with tbl(1) by specifying the configure option --with-manpage-tbl.
191 If the system already has a curses library that you need to keep using
192 for some bizarre binary-compatibility reason, you'll need to distinguish
193 between it and ncurses. If ncurses is installed outside the standard
194 directories (/usr/include and /usr/lib) then all your users will need
195 to use the -I option to compile programs and -L to link them.
197 If you have BSD curses installed in your system and you accidentally
198 compile using its curses.h you'll end up with a large number of
199 undefined symbols at link time. _waddbytes is one of them.
201 IF YOU DO NOT HAVE ROOT: Change directory to the `progs' subdirectory
202 and run the `capconvert' script. This script will deduce various things
203 about your environment and use them to build you a private terminfo tree,
204 so you can use ncurses applications.
206 If more than one user at your site does this, the space for the duplicate
207 trees is wasted. Try to get your site administrators to install a system-
208 wide terminfo tree instead.
210 See the BSD CONVERSION NOTES section below for a few more details.
212 6. The c++ directory has C++ classes that are built on top of ncurses and
213 panels. You must have c++ (and its libraries) installed before you can
214 compile and run the demo.
216 Use --without-cxx-binding to tell configure to not build the C++ bindings
219 If you do not have C++, you must use the --without-cxx option to tell
220 the configure script to not attempt to determine the type of 'bool'
221 which may be supported by C++. IF YOU USE THIS OPTION, BE ADVISED THAT
222 YOU MAY NOT BE ABLE TO COMPILE (OR RUN) NCURSES APPLICATIONS WITH C++.
224 7. If you're running an older Linux, you must either (a) tell Linux that the
225 console terminal type is `linux' or (b) make a link to or copy of the
226 linux entry in the appropriate place under your terminfo directory, named
227 `console'. All 1.3 and many 1.2 distributions (including Yggdrasil and
228 Red Hat) already have the console type set to `linux'.
230 The way to change the wired-in console type depends on the configuration
231 of your system. This may involve editing /etc/inittab, /etc/ttytype,
232 /etc/profile and other such files.
234 Warning: this is not for the fainthearted, if you mess up your console
235 getty entries you can make your system unusable! However, if you are
236 a distribution maker, this is the right thing to do (see the note for
237 integrators near the end of this file).
239 The easier way is to link or copy l/linux to c/console under your terminfo
240 directory. Note: this will go away next time you do `make install.data'
241 and you'll have to redo it. There is no need to have entries for all
242 possible screen sizes, ncurses will figure out the size automatically.
245 SUMMARY OF CONFIGURE OPTIONS:
246 ----------------------------
248 The configure script provides a short list of its options when you type
252 The --help and several options are common to all configure scripts that are
253 generated with autoconf. Those are all listed before the line
255 --enable and --with options recognized:
257 The other options are specific to this package. We list them in alphabetic
260 --disable-assumed-color
261 With ncurses 5.1, we introduced a new function, assume_default_colors()
262 which allows applications to specify what the default foreground and
263 background color are assumed to be. Most color applications use
264 full-screen color; but a few do not color the background. While the
265 assumed values can be overridden by invoking assume_default_colors(),
266 you may find it useful to set the assumed values to the pre-5.1
267 convention, using this configure option.
270 Assume machine has little memory. The configure script attempts to
271 determine if your machine has enough memory (about 6Mb) to compile the
272 terminfo database without writing portions to disk. Some allocators
273 return deceptive results, so you may have to override the configure
274 script. Or you may be building tic for a smaller machine.
277 Use only built-in data. The ncurses libraries normally read terminfo
278 and termcap data from disk. You can configure ncurses to have a
279 built-in database, aka "fallback" entries. Embedded applications may
280 have no need for an external database.
283 Disable function-extensions. Configure ncurses without the functions
284 that are not specified by XSI. See ncurses/modules for the exact
285 list of library modules that would be suppressed.
288 Compile without hashmap scrolling-optimization code. This algorithm is
292 For testing, compile-in code that frees memory that normally would not
293 be freed, to simplify analysis of memory-leaks.
296 For testing, use functions rather than macros. The program will run
297 more slowly, but it is simpler to debug. This makes a header file
298 "nomacros.h". See also the --enable-expanded option.
301 If you are installing ncurses on a system which contains another
302 development version of curses, or which could be confused by the loader
303 for another version, we recommend that you leave out the link to
304 -lcurses. The ncurses library is always available as -lncurses.
305 Disabling overwrite also causes the ncurses header files to be
306 installed into a subdirectory, e.g., /usr/local/include/ncurses,
307 rather than the include directory. This makes it simpler to avoid
308 compile-time conflicts with other versions of curses.h
310 --disable-root-environ
311 Compile with environment restriction, so certain environment variables
312 are not available when running as root, or via a setuid/setgid
313 application. These are (for example $TERMINFO) those that allow the
314 search path for the terminfo or termcap entry to be customized.
316 --disable-scroll-hints
317 Compile without scroll-hints code. This option is ignored when
318 hashmap scrolling is configured, which is the default.
320 --enable-add-ons=DIR...
321 This is used to check if this package is a glibc add-on. This is used
322 only by the glibc makefiles.
325 For testing, compile-in assertion code. This is used only for a few
326 places where ncurses cannot easily recover by returning an error code.
328 --enable-broken_linker
329 A few platforms have what we consider a broken linker: it cannot link
330 objects from an archive solely by referring to data objects in those
331 files, but requires a function reference. This configure option
332 changes several data references to functions to work around this
335 NOTE: With ncurses 5.1, this may not be necessary, since we are
336 told that some linkers interpret uninitialized global data as a
337 different type of reference which behaves as described above. We have
338 explicitly initialized all of the global data to work around the
342 Recognize BSD-style prefix padding. Some ancient BSD programs (such as
343 nethack) call tputs("50") to implement delays.
346 Compile with experimental $COLORFGBG code. That environment variable
347 is set by some terminal emulators as a hint to applications, by
348 advertising the default foreground and background colors. During
349 initialization, ncurses sets color pair 0 to match this.
352 The curses interface as documented in XSI is rather old, in fact
353 including features that precede ANSI C. The prototypes generally do
354 not make effective use of "const". When using stricter compilers (or
355 gcc with appropriate warnings), you may see warnings about the mismatch
356 between const and non-const data. We provide a configure option which
357 changes the interfaces to use const - quieting these warnings and
358 reflecting the actual use of the parameters more closely. The ncurses
359 library uses the symbol NCURSES_CONST for these instances of const,
360 and if you have asked for compiler warnings, will add gcc's const-qual
361 warning. There will still be warnings due to subtle inconsistencies
362 in the interface, but at a lower level.
364 NOTE: configuring ncurses with this option may detract from the
365 portability of your applications by encouraging you to use const in
366 places where the XSI curses interface would not allow them. Similar
367 issues arise when porting to SVr4 curses, which uses const in even
371 Use the option --disable-echo to make the build-log less verbose by
372 suppressing the display of the compile and link commands. This makes
373 it easier to see the compiler warnings. (You can always use "make -n"
374 to see the options that are used).
377 For testing, generate functions for certain macros to make them visible
378 as such to the debugger. See also the --disable-macros option.
381 Use the 4.4BSD getcap code if available, or a bundled version of it to
382 fetch termcap entries. Entries read in this way cannot use (make
383 cross-references to) the terminfo tree, but it is faster than reading
386 --enable-getcap-cache
387 Cache translated termcaps under the directory $HOME/.terminfo
389 NOTE: this sounds good - it makes ncurses run faster the second time.
390 But look where the data comes from - an /etc/termcap containing lots of
391 entries that are not up to date. If you configure with this option and
392 forget to install the terminfo database before running an ncurses
393 application, you will end up with a hidden terminfo database that
394 generally does not support color and will miss some function keys.
397 Compile-in cursor-optimization code that uses hard-tabs. We would make
398 this a standard feature except for the concern that the terminfo entry
399 may not be accurate, or that your stty settings have disabled the use
403 Compile-in support for the $NCURSES_NO_PADDING environment variable,
404 which allows you to suppress the effect of non-mandatory padding in
405 terminfo entries. This is the default, unless you have disabled the
409 Use rpath option when generating shared libraries, and with some
410 restrictions when linking the corresponding programs. This applies
411 mainly to systems using the GNU linker (read the manpage).
413 --enable-safe-sprintf
414 Compile with experimental safe-sprintf code. You may consider using
415 this if you are building ncurses for a system that has neither
416 vsnprintf() or vsprintf(). It is slow, however.
419 Compile support for ncurses' SIGWINCH handler. If your application has
420 its own SIGWINCH handler, ncurses will not use its own. The ncurses
421 handler causes wgetch() to return KEY_RESIZE when the screen-size
422 changes. This option is the default, unless you have disabled the
426 If your system supports symbolic links, make tic use symbolic links
427 rather than hard links to save diskspace when writing aliases in the
431 Compile-in support for user-definable terminal capabilities. Use the
432 -x option of tic and infocmp to treat unrecognized terminal
433 capabilities as user-defined strings. This option is the default,
434 unless you have disabled the extended functions.
437 Compile in support for reading terminal descriptions from termcap if no
438 match is found in the terminfo database. See also the --enable-getcap
439 and --enable-getcap-cache options.
442 Turn on GCC compiler warnings. There should be only a few.
445 Compile with experimental wide-character code. This makes a different
446 version of the libraries (e.g., libncursesw.so), which stores
447 characters in 16-bits. We provide a simple UTF-8 driver and test
448 program to use this feature with terminals that can display UTF-8.
450 NOTE: applications compiled with this configuration are not compatible
451 with those built for 8-bit characters. You cannot simply make a
452 symbolic link to equate libncurses.so with libncursesw.so
455 Compile-in support experimental xmc (magic cookie) code.
457 --with-ada-compiler=CMD
458 Specify the Ada95 compiler command (default "gnatmake")
460 --with-ada-include=DIR
461 Tell where to install the Ada includes (default:
462 PREFIX/lib/ada/adainclude)
464 --with-ada-objects=DIR
465 Tell where to install the Ada objects (default: PREFIX/lib/ada/adalib)
468 Specify the terminfo source file to install. Usually you will wish
469 to install ncurses' default (misc/terminfo.src). Certain systems
470 have special requirements, e.g, OS/2 EMX has a customized terminfo
474 For testing, compile and link with Conor Cahill's dbmalloc library.
477 Generate debug-libraries (default). These are named by adding "_g"
478 to the root, e.g., libncurses_g.a
480 --with-default-terminfo-dir=XXX
481 Specify the default terminfo database directory. This is normally
482 DATADIR/terminfo, e.g., /usr/share/terminfo.
485 Enable experimental/development options. This does not count those
486 that change the interface, such as --enable-widec.
489 For testing, compile and link with Gray Watson's dmalloc library.
492 Specify a list of fallback terminal descriptions which will be
493 compiled into the ncurses library. See CONFIGURING FALLBACK ENTRIES.
496 use Alessandro Rubini's GPM library to provide mouse support on the
499 --with-install-prefix=XXX
500 Allows you to specify an alternate location for installing ncurses
501 after building it. The value you specify is prepended to the "real"
502 install location. This simplifies making binary packages.
504 NOTE: a few systems build shared libraries with fixed pathnames; this
505 option probably will not work for those configurations.
508 Generate libraries with libtool. If this option is selected, then
509 it overrides all other library model specifications.
511 --with-manpage-format=XXX
512 Tell the configure script how you would like to install man-pages. The
513 option value must be one of these: gzip, compress, BSDI, normal,
514 formatted. If you do not give this option, the configure script
515 attempts to determine which is the case.
517 --with-manpage-renames=XXX
518 Tell the configure script that you wish to rename the manpages while
519 installing. Currently the only distribution which does this is
520 the Linux Debian. The option value specifies the name of a file
521 that lists the renamed files, e.g., $srcdir/man/man_db.renames
523 --with-manpage-symlinks
524 Tell the configure script that you wish to make symbolic links in the
525 man-directory for aliases to the man-pages. This is the default, but
526 can be disabled for systems that provide this automatically. Doing
527 this on systems that do not support symbolic links will result in
528 copying the man-page for each alias.
531 Tell the configure script that you with to preprocess the manpages
532 by running them through tbl to generate tables understandable by
536 Generate normal (i.e., static) libraries (default).
539 Generate profile-libraries These are named by adding "_p" to the root,
543 Compile-in RCS identifiers. Most of the C files have an identifier.
546 Generate shared-libraries. The names given depend on the system for
547 which you are building, typically using a ".so" suffix, along with
548 symbolic links that refer to the release version.
550 NOTE: Unless you override the configure script by setting the $CFLAGS
551 environment variable, these will not be built with the -g debugging
554 --with-shlib-version=XXX
555 Specify whether to use the release or ABI version for shared libraries.
556 This is normally chosen automatically based on the type of system
557 which you are building on. We use it for testing the configure script.
559 --with-system-type=XXX
560 For testing, override the derived host system-type which is used to
561 decide things such as the linker commands used to build shared
562 libraries. This is normally chosen automatically based on the type of
563 system which you are building on. We use it for testing the configure
566 --with-terminfo-dirs=XXX
567 Specify a search-list of terminfo directories which will be compiled
568 into the ncurses library (default: DATADIR/terminfo)
571 When building the ncurses library, organize this as two parts: the
572 curses library (libncurses) and the low-level terminfo library
573 (libtinfo). This is done to accommodate applications that use only
574 the latter. The terminfo library is about half the size of the total.
577 Suppress the configure script's check for Ada95, do not build the
578 Ada95 binding and related demo.
581 Don't install the ncurses header with the name "curses.h". Rather,
582 install as "ncurses.h" and modify the installed headers and manpages
586 XSI curses declares "bool" as part of the interface. C++ also declares
587 "bool". Neither specifies the size and type of booleans, but both
588 insist on the same name. We chose to accommodate this by making the
589 configure script check for the size and type (e.g., unsigned or signed)
590 that your C++ compiler uses for booleans. If you do not wish to use
591 ncurses with C++, use this option to tell the configure script to not
592 adjust ncurses bool to match C++.
594 --without-cxx-binding
595 Suppress the configure script's check for C++, do not build the
596 C++ binding and related demo.
599 Tell the configure script to suppress the build of ncurses' application
600 programs (e.g., tic). The test applications will still be built if you
601 type "make", though not if you simply do "make install".
604 COMPATIBILITY WITH OLDER VERSIONS OF NCURSES:
605 --------------------------------------------
607 Because ncurses implements the X/Open Curses Specification, its interface
608 is fairly stable. That does not mean the interface does not change.
609 Changes are made to the documented interfaces when we find differences
610 between ncurses and X/Open or implementations which they certify (such as
611 Solaris). We add extensions to those interfaces to solve problems not
612 addressed by the original curses design, but those must not conflict with
613 the X/Open documentation.
615 Here are some of the major interface changes, and related problems which
616 you may encounter when building a system with different versions of
622 + made the extended terminal capabilities
623 (configure --enable-tcap-names) a standard feature. This should
624 be transparent to applications that do not require it.
626 + removed the trace() function and related trace support from the
629 + modified curses.h.in, undef'ing some symbols to avoid conflict
632 Added extensions: assume_default_colors().
634 5.0 (October 23, 1999)
637 + implemented the wcolor_set() and slk_color() functions.
639 + move macro winch to a function, to hide details of struct ldat
641 + corrected prototypes for slk_* functions, using chtype rather than
644 + the slk_attr_{set,off,on} functions need an additional void*
645 parameter according to XSI.
647 + modified several prototypes to correspond with 1997 version of X/Open
648 Curses: [w]attr_get(), [w]attr_set(), border_set() have different
649 parameters. Some functions were renamed or misspelled:
650 erase_wchar(), in_wchntr(), mvin_wchntr(). Some developers have used
653 Added extensions: keybound(), curses_version().
655 Terminfo database changes:
657 + change translation for termcap 'rs' to terminfo 'rs2', which is
658 the documented equivalent, rather than 'rs1'.
660 The problems are subtler in recent releases.
662 a) This release provides users with the ability to define their own
663 terminal capability extensions, like termcap. To accomplish this,
664 we redesigned the TERMTYPE struct (in term.h). Very few
665 applications use this struct. They must be recompiled to work with
668 a) If you use the extended terminfo names (i.e., you used configure
669 --enable-tcap-names), the resulting terminfo database can have some
670 entries which are not readable by older versions of ncurses. This
671 is a bug in the older versions:
673 + the terminfo database stores booleans, numbers and strings in
674 arrays. The capabilities that are listed in the arrays are
675 specified by X/Open. ncurses recognizes a number of obsolete and
676 extended names which are stored past the end of the specified
679 + a change to read_entry.c in 951001 made the library do an lseek()
680 call incorrectly skipping data which is already read from the
681 string array. This happens when the number of strings in the
682 terminfo data file is greater than STRCOUNT, the number of
683 specified and obsolete or extended strings.
685 + as part of alignment with the X/Open final specification, in the
686 990109 patch we added two new terminfo capabilities:
687 set_a_attributes and set_pglen_inch). This makes the indices for
688 the obsolete and extended capabilities shift up by 2.
690 + the last two capabilities in the obsolete/extended list are memu
691 and meml, which are found in most terminfo descriptions for xterm.
693 When trying to read this terminfo entry, the spurious lseek()
694 causes the library to attempt to read the final portion of the
695 terminfo data (the text of the string capabilities) 4 characters
696 past its starting point, and reads 4 characters too few. The
697 library rejects the data, and applications are unable to
698 initialize that terminal type.
700 FIX: remove memu and meml from the xterm description. They are
701 obsolete, not used by ncurses. (It appears that the feature was
702 added to xterm to make it more like hpterm).
704 This is not a problem if you do not use the -x option of tic to
705 create a terminfo database with extended names. Note that the
706 user-defined terminal capabilities are not affected by this bug,
707 since they are stored in a table after the older terminfo data ends,
708 and are invisible to the older libraries.
710 c) Some developers did not wish to use the C++ binding, and used the
711 configure --without-cxx option. This causes problems if someone
712 uses the ncurses library from C++ because that configure test
713 determines the type for C++'s bool and makes ncurses match it, since
714 both C++ and curses are specified to declare bool. Calling ncurses
715 functions with the incorrect type for bool will cause execution
716 errors. In 5.0 we added a configure option "--without-cxx-binding"
717 which controls whether the binding itself is built and installed.
722 + correct prototype for termattrs() as per XPG4 version 2.
724 + add placeholder prototypes for color_set(), erasewchar(),
725 term_attrs(), wcolor_set() as per XPG4 version 2.
727 + add macros getcur[xy] getbeg[xy] getpar[xy], which are defined in
730 New extensions: keyok() and define_key().
732 Terminfo database changes:
734 + corrected definition in curses.h for ACS_LANTERN, which was 'I'
739 We added these extensions: use_default_colors(). Also added
740 configure option --enable-const, to support the use of const where
741 X/Open should have, but did not, specify.
743 The terminfo database content changed the representation of color for
744 most entries that use ANSI colors. SVr4 curses treats the setaf/setab
745 and setf/setb capabilities differently, interchanging the red/blue
746 colors in the latter.
748 4.0 (December 24, 1996)
750 We bumped to version 4.0 because the newly released dynamic loader
751 (ld.so.1.8.5) on Linux did not load shared libraries whose ABI and REL
752 versions were inconsistent. At that point, ncurses ABI was 3.4 and the
753 REL was 1.9.9g, so we made them consistent.
755 1.9.9g (December 1, 1996)
757 This fixed most of the problems with 1.9.9e, and made these interface
760 + remove tparam(), which had been provided for compatibility with
761 some termcap. tparm() is standard, and does not conflict with
762 application's fallback for missing tparam().
764 + turn off hardware echo in initscr(). This changes the sense of the
765 echo() function, which was initialized to echoing rather than
766 nonechoing (the latter is specified). There were several other
767 corrections to the terminal I/O settings which cause applications to
770 + implemented several functions (such as attr_on()) which were
771 available only as macros.
773 + corrected several typos in curses.h.in (i.e., the mvXXXX macros).
775 + corrected prototypes for delay_output(),
776 has_color, immedok() and idcok().
778 + corrected misspelled getbkgd(). Some applications used the
781 + added _yoffset to WINDOW. The size of WINDOW does not impact
782 applications, since they use only pointers to WINDOW structs.
784 These changes were made to the terminfo database:
786 + removed boolean 'getm' which was available as an extended name.
788 We added these extensions: wresize(), resizeterm(), has_key() and
791 1.9.9e (March 24, 1996)
793 not recommended (a last-minute/untested change left the forms and
794 menus libraries unusable since they do not repaint the screen).
795 Foreground/background colors are combined incorrectly, working properly
796 only on a black background. When this was released, the X/Open
797 specification was available only in draft form.
799 Some applications (such as lxdialog) were "fixed" to work with the
800 incorrect color scheme.
803 IF YOU ARE A SYSTEM INTEGRATOR:
804 ------------------------------
806 Beginning with 1.9.9, the ncurses distribution includes both a tset
807 utility and /usr/share/tabset directory. If you are installing ncurses,
808 it is no longer either necessary or desirable to install tset-jv.
810 Configuration and Installation:
812 Configure with --prefix=/usr to make the install productions put
813 libraries and headers in the correct locations (overwriting any
814 previous curses libraries and headers). This will put the terminfo
815 hierarchy under /usr/share/terminfo; you may want to override this with
816 --datadir=/usr/share/misc; terminfo and tabset are installed under the
819 Please configure the ncurses library in a pure-terminfo mode; that
820 is, with the --disable-termcap option. This will make the ncurses
821 library smaller and faster. The ncurses library includes a termcap
822 emulation that queries the terminfo database, so even applications
823 that use raw termcap to query terminal characteristics will win
824 (providing you recompile and relink them!).
826 If you must configure with termcap fallback enabled, you may also
827 wish to use the --enable-getcap option. This option speeds up
828 termcap-based startups, at the expense of not allowing personal
829 termcap entries to reference the terminfo tree. See the code in
830 ncurses/tinfo/read_termcap.c for details.
832 Note that if you have $TERMCAP set, ncurses will use that value
833 to locate termcap data. In particular, running from xterm will
834 set $TERMCAP to the contents of the xterm's termcap entry.
835 If ncurses sees that, it will not examine /etc/termcap.
839 The terminfo file assumes that Shift-Tab generates \E[Z (the ECMA-48
840 reverse-tabulation sequence) rather than ^I. Here are the loadkeys -d
841 mappings that will set this up:
844 alt keycode 15 = Meta_Tab
845 shift keycode 15 = F26
848 Naming the Console Terminal
850 In various Linuxes (and possibly elsewhere) there has been a practice
851 of designating the system console driver type as `console'. Please
852 do not do this any more! It complicates peoples' lives, because it
853 can mean that several different terminfo entries from different
854 operating systems all logically want to be called `console'.
856 Please pick a name unique to your console driver and set that up
857 in the /etc/inittab table or local equivalent. Send the entry to the
858 terminfo maintainer (listed in the misc/terminfo file) to be included
859 in the terminfo file, if it's not already there. See the
860 term(7) manual page included with this distribution for more on
861 conventions for choosing type names.
863 Here are some recommended primary console names:
865 linux -- Linux console driver
870 If you are responsible for integrating ncurses for one of these
871 distribution, please either use the recommended name or get back
872 to us explaining why you don't want to, so we can work out nomenclature
873 that will make users' lives easier rather than harder.
876 RECENT XTERM VERSIONS:
877 ---------------------
879 The terminfo database file included with this distribution assumes you
880 are running an XFree86 xterm based on X11R6 (i.e., xterm-r6). The
881 earlier X11R5 entry (xterm-r5) is provided as well.
883 If you are running XFree86 version 3.2 (actually 3.1.2F and up), you
884 should consider using the xterm-xf86-v32 (or later, the most recent
885 version is always named "xterm-xfree86") entry, which adds ANSI color
886 and the VT220 capabilities which have been added in XFree86. If you
887 are running a mixed network, however, where this terminal description
888 may be used on an older xterm, you may have problems, since
889 applications that assume these capabilities will produce incorrect
890 output on the older xterm (e.g., highlighting is not cleared).
893 CONFIGURING FALLBACK ENTRIES:
894 ----------------------------
896 In order to support operation of ncurses programs before the terminfo
897 tree is accessible (that is, in single-user mode or at OS installation
898 time) the ncurses library can be compiled to include an array of
899 pre-fetched fallback entries.
901 These entries are checked by setupterm() only when the conventional
902 fetches from the terminfo tree and the termcap fallback (if configured)
903 have been tried and failed. Thus, the presence of a fallback will not
904 shadow modifications to the on-disk entry for the same type, when that
907 By default, there are no entries on the fallback list. After you
908 have built the ncurses suite for the first time, you can change
909 the list (the process needs infocmp(1)). To do so, use the script
910 MKfallback.sh. A configure script option --with-fallbacks does this
911 (it accepts a comma-separated list of the names you wish, and does
912 not require a rebuild).
914 If you wanted (say) to have linux, vt100, and xterm fallbacks, you
915 would use the commands
918 MKfallback.sh linux vt100 xterm >fallback.c
920 Then just rebuild and reinstall the library as you would normally.
921 You can restore the default empty fallback list with
923 MKfallback.sh >fallback.c
925 The overhead for an empty fallback list is one trivial stub function.
926 Any non-empty fallback list is const-ed and therefore lives in sharable
927 text space. You can look at the comment trailing each initializer in
928 the generated ncurses/fallback.c file to see the core cost of the
929 fallbacks. A good rule of thumb for modern vt100-like entries is that
930 each one will cost about 2.5K of text space.
933 BSD CONVERSION NOTES:
936 If you need to support really ancient BSD programs, you probably
937 want to configure with the --enable-bsdpad option. What this does
938 is enable code in tputs() that recognizes a numeric prefix on a
939 capability as a request for that much trailing padding in milliseconds.
940 There are old BSD programs that do things like tputs("50").
942 (If you are distributing ncurses as a support-library component of
943 an application you probably want to put the remainder of this section
944 in the package README file.)
946 The following note applies only if you have configured ncurses with
949 ------------------------------- CUT HERE --------------------------------
951 If you are installing this application privately (either because you
952 have no root access or want to experiment with it before doing a root
953 installation), there are a couple of details you need to be aware of.
954 They have to do with the ncurses library, which uses terminfo rather
955 than termcap for describing terminal characteristics.
957 Though the ncurses library is terminfo-based, it will interpret your
958 TERMCAP variable (if present), any local termcap files you reference
959 through it, and the system termcap file. However, in order to avoid
960 slowing down your application startup, it will only do this once per
963 The first time you load a given terminal type from your termcap
964 database, the library initialization code will automatically write it
965 in terminfo format to a subdirectory under $HOME/.terminfo. After
966 that, the initialization code will find it there and do a (much
967 faster) terminfo fetch.
969 Usually, all this means is that your home directory will silently grow
970 an invisible .terminfo subdirectory which will get filled in with
971 terminfo descriptions of terminal types as you invoke them. If anyone
972 ever installs a global terminfo tree on your system, this will quietly
973 stop happening and your $HOME/.terminfo will become redundant.
975 The objective of all this logic is to make converting from BSD termcap
976 as painless as possible without slowing down your application (termcap
977 compilation is expensive).
979 If you don't have a TERMCAP variable or custom personal termcap file,
980 you can skip the rest of this dissertation.
982 If you *do* have a TERMCAP variable and/or a custom personal termcap file
983 that defines a terminal type, that definition will stop being visible
984 to this application after the first time you run it, because it will
985 instead see the terminfo entry that it wrote to $HOME/terminfo the
988 Subsequently, editing the TERMCAP variable or personal TERMCAP file
989 will have no effect unless you explicitly remove the terminfo entry
990 under $HOME/terminfo. If you do that, the entry will be recompiled
991 from your termcap resources the next time it is invoked.
993 To avoid these complications, use infocmp(1) and tic(1) to edit the
994 terminfo directory directly.
996 ------------------------------- CUT HERE --------------------------------
998 USING NCURSES WITH AFS:
999 AFS treats each directory as a separate logical filesystem, you
1000 can't hard-link across them. The --enable-symlinks option copes
1001 with this by making tic use symbolic links.
1003 USING NCURSES WITH EMACS:
1004 GNU Emacs has its own termcap support. By default, it uses a mixture
1005 of those functions and code linked from the host system's libraries.
1006 You need to foil this and shut out the GNU termcap library entirely.
1008 In order to do this, hack the Linux config file (s/linux.h) to contain
1009 a #define TERMINFO and set the symbol LIBS_TERMCAP to "-lncurses".
1011 We have submitted such a change for the 19.30 release, so it may
1012 already be applied in your sources -- check for the #define TERMINFO.
1014 USING NCURSES WITH GPM:
1015 Ncurses 4.1 and up can be configured to use GPM (General Purpose Mouse)
1016 which is used on Linux console. Be aware that GPM is commonly
1017 installed as a shared library which contains a wrapper for the curses
1018 wgetch() function (libcurses.o). Some integrators have simplified
1019 linking applications by combining all or part of libcurses.so (the BSD
1020 curses) into the libgpm.so file, producing symbol conflicts with
1021 ncurses (specifically the wgetch function). You may be able to work
1022 around this problem by linking as follows:
1024 cc -o foo foo.o -lncurses -lgpm -lncurses
1026 but the linker may not cooperate, producing mysterious errors.
1027 A patched version of gpm is available:
1029 dickey.his.com:/ncurses/gpm-1.10-970125.tar.gz
1031 This patch is incorporated in gpm 1.12; however some integrators
1032 are slow to update this library. Current distributions of gpm can
1033 be configured properly using the --without-curses option.
1035 BUILDING NCURSES WITH A CROSS-COMPILER
1036 Ncurses can be built with a cross-compiler. Some parts must be built
1037 with the host's compiler since they are used for building programs
1038 (e.g., ncurses/make_hash and ncurses/make_keys) that generate tables
1039 that are compiled into the ncurses library. You should set the
1040 BUILD_CC environment variable to your host's compiler, and run the
1041 configure script configuring for the cross-compiler.
1043 Note that all of the generated source-files which are part of ncurses
1044 will be made if you use
1048 This would be useful in porting to an environment which has little
1049 support for the tools used to generate the sources, e.g., sed, awk and
1053 Send any feedback to the ncurses mailing list at
1054 bug-ncurses@gnu.org. To subscribe send mail to
1055 bug-ncurses-request@gnu.org with body that reads:
1056 subscribe ncurses <your-email-address-here>
1058 The Hacker's Guide in the doc directory includes some guidelines
1059 on how to report bugs in ways that will get them fixed most quickly.