1 -- $Id: INSTALL,v 1.27 1997/04/26 23:48:19 tom Exp $
2 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
3 How to install Ncurses/Terminfo on your system
4 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
5 ************************************************************
6 * READ ALL OF THIS FILE BEFORE YOU TRY TO INSTALL NCURSES. *
7 ************************************************************
9 You should be reading the file INSTALL in a directory called ncurses-d.d, where
10 d.d is the current version number. There should be several subdirectories,
11 including `c++', `form', `man', `menu', 'misc', `ncurses', `panel', `progs',
12 and `test'. See the README file for a roadmap to the package.
14 If you are a Linux or FreeBSD or NetBSD distribution integrator or packager,
15 please read and act on the section titled IF YOU ARE A SYSTEM INTEGRATOR
18 If you are converting from BSD curses and do not have root access, be sure
19 to read the BSD CONVERSION NOTES section below.
21 If you are using a version of XFree86 xterm older than 3.1.2F, see the section
22 on RECENT XTERM VERSIONS below.
24 If you are trying to build GNU Emacs using ncurses for terminal support,
25 read the USING NCURSES WITH EMACS section below.
27 If you are trying to build applications using gpm with ncurses,
28 read the USING NCURSES WITH GPM section below.
30 If you are trying to build Elvis using ncurses for terminal support,
31 read the USING NCURSES WITH ELVIS section below.
33 If you are running over the Andrew File System see the note below on
34 USING NCURSES WITH AFS.
36 If you want to build the Ada95 binding, go to the Ada95 directory and
37 follow the instructions there. The Ada95 binding is not covered below.
39 If you are using anything but (a) Linux, or (b) one of the 4.4BSD-based
40 i386 Unixes, go read the Portability section in the TO-DO file before you
45 You will need the following in order to build and install ncurses under UNIX:
47 * ANSI C compiler (gcc is recommended)
49 * awk (mawk or gawk will do)
51 * BSD or System V style install (a script is enclosed)
53 INSTALLATION PROCEDURE:
55 1. First, decide whether you want ncurses to replace your existing library (in
56 which case you'll need super-user privileges) or be installed in parallel
59 The --prefix option to configure changes the root directory for installing
60 ncurses. The default is in subdirectories of /usr/local. Use
61 --prefix=/usr to replace your default curses distribution. This is the
62 default for Linux and BSD/OS users.
64 The package gets installed beneath the --prefix directory as follows:
66 In $(prefix)/bin: tic, infocmp, captoinfo, tset,
67 reset, clear, tput, toe
68 In $(prefix)/lib: libncurses*.* libcurses.a
69 In $(prefix)/share/terminfo: compiled terminal descriptions
70 In $(prefix)/include: C header files
71 Under $(prefix)/man: the manual pages
73 Note however that the configure script attempts to locate previous
74 installation of ncurses, and will set the default prefix according to where
75 it finds the ncurses headers.
77 2. Type `./configure' in the top-level directory of the distribution to
78 configure ncurses for your operating system and create the Makefiles.
79 Besides --prefix, various configuration options are available to customize
80 the installation; use `./configure --help' to list the available options.
82 If your operating system is not supported, read the PORTABILITY section in
83 the file ncurses/README for information on how to create a configuration
86 The `configure' script generates makefile rules for one or more object
87 models and their associated libraries:
91 libcurses.a (normal, a link to libncurses.a)
92 This gets left out if you configure with --disable-overwrite.
94 libncurses.so (shared)
96 libncurses_g.a (debug)
98 libncurses_p.a (profile)
100 If you do not specify any models, the normal and debug libraries will be
101 configured. Typing `configure' with no arguments is equivalent to:
103 ./configure --with-normal --with-debug --enable-overwrite
107 ./configure --with-shared
109 makes the shared libraries the default, resulting in
111 ./configure --with-shared --with-normal --with-debug --enable-overwrite
113 If you want only shared libraries, type
115 ./configure --with-shared --without-normal --without-debug
117 Rules for generating shared libraries are highly dependent upon the choice
118 of host system and compiler. We've been testing shared libraries on Linux
119 and SunOS with gcc, but more work needs to be done to make shared libraries
120 work on other systems.
122 You can make curses and terminfo fall back to an existing file of termcap
123 definitions by configuring with --enable-termcap. If you do this, the
124 library will search /etc/termcap before the terminfo database, and will
125 also interpret the contents of the TERM environment variable. See the
126 section BSD CONVERSION NOTES below.
128 3. Type `make'. Ignore any warnings, no error messages should be produced.
129 This should compile the ncurses library, the terminfo compiler tic(1),
130 captoinfo(1), infocmp(1), toe(1), clear(1) tset(1), reset(1), and tput(1)
131 programs (see the man pages for explanation of what they do), some test
132 programs, and the panels, menus, and forms libraries.
134 4. Run ncurses and several other test programs in the test directory to
135 verify that ncurses functions correctly before doing an install that
136 may overwrite system files. Read the file test/README for details on
139 NOTE: You must have installed the terminfo database, or set the
140 environment variable $TERMINFO to point to a SVr4-compatible terminfo
141 database before running the test programs. Not all vendors' terminfo
142 databases are SVr4-compatible, but most seem to be. Exceptions include
143 DEC's Digital Unix (formerly known as OSF/1).
145 The ncurses program is designed specifically to test the ncurses library.
146 You can use it to verify that the screen highlights work correctly, that
147 cursor addressing and window scrolling works OK, etc.
149 5. Once you've tested, you can type `make install' to install libraries,
150 the programs, the terminfo database and the man pages. Alternately, you
151 can type `make install' in each directory you want to install. In the
152 top-level directory, you can do a partial install using these commands:
154 'make install.progs' installs tic, infocmp, etc...
155 'make install.includes' installs the headers.
156 'make install.libs' installs the libraries (and the headers).
157 'make install.data' installs the terminfo data. (Note: `tic' must
158 be installed before the terminfo data can be
160 'make install.man' installs the man pages.
162 ############################################################################
163 # CAVEAT EMPTOR: `install.data' run as root will NUKE any existing #
164 # terminfo database. If you have any custom or unusual entries SAVE them #
165 # before you install ncurses. I have a file called terminfo.custom for #
166 # this purpose. Don't forget to run tic on the file once you're done. #
167 ############################################################################
169 The terminfo(5) manual page wants to be preprocessed with tbl(1) before
170 being formatted by nroff(1). Modern man(1) implementations tend to do
171 this by default, but you may want to look at your version's man page
174 If the system already has a curses library that you need to keep using
175 for some bizarre binary-compatibility reason, you'll need to distinguish
176 between it and ncurses. If ncurses is installed outside the standard
177 directories (/usr/include and /usr/lib) then all your users will need
178 to use the -I option to compile programs and -L to link them.
180 If you have BSD curses installed in your system and you accidentally
181 compile using its curses.h you'll end up with a large number of
182 undefined symbols at link time. _waddbytes is one of them.
184 IF YOU DO NOT HAVE ROOT: Change directory to the `progs' subdirectory
185 and run the `capconvert' script. This script will deduce various things
186 about your environment and use them to build you a private terminfo tree,
187 so you can use ncurses applications.
189 If more than one user at your site does this, the space for the duplicate
190 trees is wasted. Try to get your site administrators to install a system-
191 wide terminfo tree instead.
193 See the BSD CONVERSION NOTES section below for a few more details.
195 6. The c++ directory has C++ classes that are built on top of ncurses and
196 panels. You need to have c++ (and its libraries) installed before you can
197 compile and run the demo.
199 7. If you're running an older Linux, you must either (a) tell Linux that the
200 console terminal type is `linux' or (b) make a link to or copy of the
201 linux entry in the appropriate place under your terminfo directory, named
202 `console'. All 1.3 and many 1.2 distributions (including Yggdrasil and
203 Red Hat) already have the console type set to `linux'.
205 The way to change the wired-in console type depends on the configuration
206 of your system. This may involve editing /etc/inittab, /etc/ttytype,
207 /etc/profile and other such files.
209 Warning: this is not for the fainthearted, if you mess up your console
210 getty entries you can make your system unusable! However, if you are
211 a distribution maker, this is the right thing to do (see the note for
212 integrators near the end of this file).
214 The easier way is to link or copy l/linux to c/console under your terminfo
215 directory. Note: this will go away next time you do `make install.data'
216 and you'll have to redo it. There is no need to have entries for all
217 possible screen sizes, ncurses will figure out the size automatically.
219 IF YOU ARE A SYSTEM INTEGRATOR:
221 Beginning with 1.9.9, the ncurses distribution includes both a tset
222 utility and /usr/share/tabset directory. If you are installing ncurses,
223 it is no longer either necessary or desirable to install tset-jv.
225 Configuration and Installation:
227 Configure with --prefix=/usr to make the install productions put
228 libraries and headers in the correct locations (overwriting any
229 previous curses libraries and headers). This will put the terminfo
230 hierarchy under /usr/share/terminfo; you may want to override this with
231 --datadir=/usr/share/misc; terminfo and tabset are installed under the
234 Please configure the ncurses library in a pure-terminfo mode; that
235 is, with the --disable-termcap option. This will make the ncurses
236 library smaller and faster. The ncurses library includes a termcap
237 emulation that queries the terminfo database, so even applications
238 that use raw termcap to query terminal characteristics will win
239 (providing you recompile and relink them!).
241 If you must configure with termcap fallback enabled, you may also
242 wish to use the --enable-getcap option. This option speeds up
243 termcap-based startups, at the expense of not allowing personal
244 termcap entries to reference the terminfo tree. See the code in
245 ncurses/read_termcap.c for details.
249 The terminfo file assumes that Shift-Tab generates \E[Z (the ECMA-48
250 reverse-tabulation sequence) rather than ^I. Here are the loadkeys -d
251 mappings that will set this up:
254 alt keycode 15 = Meta_Tab
255 shift keycode 15 = F26
258 Naming the Console Terminal
260 In various Linuxes (and possibly elsewhere) there has been a practice
261 of designating the system console driver type as `console'. Please
262 do not do this any more! It complicates peoples' lives, because it
263 can mean that several different terminfo entries from different
264 operating systems all logically want to be called `console'.
266 Please pick a name unique to your console driver and set that up
267 in the /etc/inittab table or local equivalent. Send the entry to the
268 terminfo maintainer (listed in the misc/terminfo file) to be included
269 in the terminfo file, if it's not already there. See the
270 term(7) manual page included with this distribution for more on
271 conventions for choosing type names.
273 Here are our recommended primary console names for the most important
274 freeware UNIX distributions:
276 linux -- Linux console driver
281 If you are responsible for integrating ncurses for one of these
282 distribution, please either use the recommended name or get back
283 to us explaining why you don't want to, so we can work out nomenclature
284 that will make users' lives easier rather than harder.
286 RECENT XTERM VERSIONS
287 The terminfo database file included with this distribution assumes you
288 are running an XFree86 xterm based on X11R6 (i.e., xterm-r6). The
289 earlier X11R5 entry (xterm-r5) is provided as well.
291 If you are running XFree86 version 3.2 (actually 3.1.2F and up), you
292 should consider using the xterm-xf86-v32 entry, which adds ANSI color
293 and the VT220 capabilities which have been added in XFree86. If you
294 are running a mixed network, however, where this terminal description
295 may be used on an older xterm, you may have problems, since
296 applications that assume these capabilities will produce incorrect
297 output on the older xterm (e.g., highlighting is not cleared).
299 CONFIGURING FALLBACK ENTRIES
300 In order to support operation of ncurses programs before the terminfo
301 tree is accessible (that is, in single-user mode or at OS installation
302 time) the ncurses library can be compiled to include an array of
303 pre-fetched fallback entries.
305 These entries are checked by setupterm() only when the conventional
306 fetches from the terminfo tree and the termcap fallback (if configured)
307 have been tried and failed. Thus, the presence of a fallback will not
308 shadow modifications to the on-disk entry for the same type, when that
311 By default, there are no entries on the fallback list. After you
312 have built the ncurses suite for the first time, you can change
313 the list (the process needs infocmp(1)). To do so, use the
314 script MKfallback.sh.
316 If you wanted (say) to have linux, vt100, and xterm fallbacks, you
317 would use the commands
320 MKfallback.sh linux vt100 xterm >fallback.c
322 Then just rebuild and reinstall the library as you would normally.
323 You can restore the default empty fallback list with
325 MKfallback.sh >fallback.c
327 The overhead for an empty fallback list is one trivial stub function.
328 Any non-empty fallback list is const-ed and therefore lives in sharable
329 text space. You can look at the comment trailing each initializer in
330 the generated ncurses/fallback.c file to see the core cost of the
331 fallbacks. A good rule of thumb for modern vt100-like entries is that
332 each one will cost about 2.5K of text space.
334 BSD CONVERSION NOTES:
335 If you need to support really ancient BSD programs, you probably
336 want to configure with the --enable-bsdpad option. What this does
337 is enable code in tputs() that recognizes a numeric prefix on a
338 capability as a request for that much trailing padding in milliseconds.
339 There are old BSD programs that do things like tputs("50").
341 (If you are distributing ncurses as a support-library component of
342 an application you probably want to put the remainder of this section
343 in the package README file.)
345 The following note applies only if you have configured ncurses with
348 ------------------------------- CUT HERE --------------------------------
350 If you are installing this application privately (either because you
351 have no root access or want to experiment with it before doing a root
352 installation), there are a couple of details you need to be aware of.
353 They have to do with the ncurses library, which uses terminfo rather
354 than termcap for describing terminal characteristics.
356 Though the ncurses library is terminfo-based, it will interpret your
357 TERMCAP variable (if present), any local termcap files you reference
358 through it, and the system termcap file. However, in order to avoid
359 slowing down your application startup, it will only do this once per
362 The first time you load a given terminal type from your termcap
363 database, the library initialization code will automatically write it
364 in terminfo format to a subdirectory under $HOME/.terminfo. After
365 that, the initialization code will find it there and do a (much
366 faster) terminfo fetch.
368 Usually, all this means is that your home directory will silently grow
369 an invisible .terminfo subdirectory which will get filled in with
370 terminfo descriptions of terminal types as you invoke them. If anyone
371 ever installs a global terminfo tree on your system, this will quietly
372 stop happening and your $HOME/.terminfo will become redundant.
374 The objective of all this logic is to make converting from BSD termcap
375 as painless as possible without slowing down your application (termcap
376 compilation is expensive).
378 If you don't have a TERMCAP variable or custom personal termcap file,
379 you can skip the rest of this dissertation.
381 If you *do* have a TERMCAP variable and/or a custom personal termcap file
382 that defines a terminal type, that definition will stop being visible
383 to this application after the first time you run it, because it will
384 instead see the terminfo entry that it wrote to $HOME/terminfo the
387 Subsequently, editing the TERMCAP variable or personal TERMCAP file
388 will have no effect unless you explicitly remove the terminfo entry
389 under $HOME/terminfo. If you do that, the entry will be recompiled
390 from your termcap resources the next time it is invoked.
392 To avoid these complications, use infocmp(1) and tic(1) to edit the
393 terminfo directory directly.
395 ------------------------------- CUT HERE --------------------------------
397 USING NCURSES WITH AFS:
398 AFS treats each directory as a separate logical filesystem, you
399 can't hard-link across them. The --enable-symlinks option copes
400 with this by making tic use symbolic links.
402 USING NCURSES WITH EMACS:
403 GNU Emacs has its own termcap support. By default, it uses a mixture
404 of those functions and code linked from the host system's libraries.
405 You need to foil this and shut out the GNU termcap library entirely.
407 In order to do this, hack the Linux config file (s/linux.h) to contain
408 a #define TERMINFO and set the symbol LIBS_TERMCAP to "-lncurses".
410 We have submitted such a change for the 19.30 release, so it may
411 already be applied in your sources -- check for the #define TERMINFO.
413 USING NCURSES WITH GPM:
414 Ncurses 4.1 can be configured to use GPM (General Purpose Mouse) which
415 is used on Linux console. Be aware that GPM is commonly installed as a
416 shared library which contains a wrapper for the curses wgetch()
417 function (libcurses.o). Some integrators have simplified linking
418 applications by combining all of libcurses.so (the BSD curses) into
419 the libgpm.so file, producing symbol conflicts with ncurses. You may
420 be able to work around this problem by linking as follows:
422 cc -o foo foo.o -lncurses -lgpm -lncurses
424 but the linker may not cooperate, producing mysterious errors.
425 A patched version of gpm is available:
427 ftp.clark.net:/pub/dickey/ncurses/gpm-1.10-970125.tgz
429 USING NCURSES WITH ELVIS:
430 To use ncurses as the screen-painting library for Elvis, apply the
431 following patch to the Elvis curses
433 *** curses.c.orig Sun Jun 26 05:48:23 1994
434 --- curses.c Sun Feb 11 16:50:41 1996
448 !#ifdef NCURSES_VERSION
449 ! else /* ncurses does insertion in a slightly nonstandard way */
456 This patch is for elvis-1.8pl4 but it can even be used for elvis-1.8pl3 with
457 an offset of -11 lines.
460 Send any feedback to the ncurses mailing list at
461 ncurses@bsdi.com. To subscribe send mail to
462 ncurses-request@mailgate.bsdi.com with body that reads:
463 subscribe ncurses <your-email-address-here>
465 The Hacker's Guide in the misc directory includes some guidelines
466 on how to report bugs in ways that will get them fixed most quickly.