- The trace routines are used for debugging the ncurses
- libraries, as well as applications which use the ncurses
- libraries. These functions are normally available only
- with the debugging library libncurses_g.a, but may be com-
- piled into any model (shared, static, profile) by defining
- the symbol TRACE.
-
- The principal parts of this interface are the trace rou-
- tine which selectively enables different tracing features,
- and the _tracef routine which writes formatted data to the
- trace file.
-
- Calling trace with a nonzero parameter opens the file
- trace in the current directory for output. The parameter
- is formed by OR'ing values from the list of TRACE_xxx def-
- initions in <curses.h>. These include:
-
- TRACE_DISABLE
- turn off tracing.
-
- TRACE_TIMES
+
+ The trace routines are used for debugging the ncurses li-
+ braries, as well as applications which use the ncurses li-
+ braries. These functions are normally available only with
+ the debugging library e.g., libncurses_g.a, but may be
+ compiled into any model (shared, static, profile) by
+ defining the symbol TRACE. Additionally, some functions
+ are only available with the wide-character configuration
+ of the libraries.
+
+
+
+ The principal parts of this interface are
+
+ otrace, which selectively enables different tracing
+ features, and
+
+ o_tracef, which writes formatted data to the trace
+ file.
+
+ Calling trace with a nonzero parameter creates the file
+ trace in the current directory for output. If the file
+ already exists, no tracing is done.
+
+ The other functions either return a pointer to a string-
+ area (allocated by the corresponding function), or return
+ no value (such as _tracedump, which implements the screen
+ dump for TRACE_UPDATE). The caller should not free these
+ strings, since the allocation is reused on successive
+ calls. To work around the problem of a single string-area
+ per function, some use a buffer-number parameter, telling
+ the library to allocate additional string-areas.
+
+
+
+ The trace parameter is formed by OR'ing values from the
+ list of TRACE_xxx definitions in <curses.h>. These in-
+ clude:
+
+ TRACE_DISABLE
+ turn off tracing by passing a zero parameter.
+
+ The library flushes the output file, but retains an
+ open file-descriptor to the trace file so that it can
+ resume tracing later if a nonzero parameter is passed
+ to the trace function.
+
+ TRACE_TIMES
trace user and system times of updates.
- TRACE_TPUTS
- trace tputs calls.
+ TRACE_TPUTS
+ trace tputs(3x) calls.
- TRACE_UPDATE
+ TRACE_UPDATE
trace update actions, old & new screens.
- TRACE_MOVE
+ TRACE_MOVE
trace cursor movement and scrolling.
- TRACE_CHARPUT
+ TRACE_CHARPUT
trace all character outputs.
- TRACE_ORDINARY
- trace all update actions. The old and new screen
- contents are written to the trace file for each
- refresh.
+ TRACE_ORDINARY
+ trace all update actions. The old and new screen
+ contents are written to the trace file for each re-
+ fresh.
- TRACE_CALLS
+ TRACE_CALLS
trace all curses calls. The parameters for each call
are traced, as well as return values.
- TRACE_VIRTPUT
+ TRACE_VIRTPUT
trace virtual character puts, i.e., calls to addch.
- TRACE_IEVENT
+ TRACE_IEVENT
trace low-level input processing, including timeouts.
- TRACE_BITS
+ TRACE_BITS
trace state of TTY control bits.
- TRACE_ICALLS
+ TRACE_ICALLS
trace internal/nested calls.
- TRACE_CCALLS
+ TRACE_CCALLS
trace per-character calls.
- TRACE_DATABASE
+ TRACE_DATABASE
trace read/write of terminfo/termcap data.
- TRACE_ATTRS
+ TRACE_ATTRS
trace changes to video attributes and colors.
- TRACE_MAXIMUM
+ TRACE_MAXIMUM
maximum trace level, enables all of the separate
trace features.
- Some tracing features are enabled whenever the trace
- parameter is nonzero. Some features overlap. The
- specific names are used as a guideline.
+ Some tracing features are enabled whenever the trace pa-
+ rameter is nonzero. Some features overlap. The specific
+ names are used as a guideline.
-
-
RETURN VALUE
- Routines which return a value are designed to be used as
+
+ These functions check the NCURSES_TRACE environment vari-
+ able, to set the tracing feature as if trace was called:
+
+ filter, initscr, new_prescr, newterm, nofilter,
+ restartterm, ripoffline, setupterm, slk_init, tgetent,
+ use_env, use_extended_names, use_tioctl
+
+
+
+ The command-line utilities such as tic(1) provide a ver-
+ bose option which extends the set of messages written us-
+ ing the trace function. Both of these (-v and trace) use
+ the same variable (_nc_tracing), which determines the mes-
+ sages which are written.
+
+ Because the command-line utilities may call initialization
+ functions such as setupterm, tgetent or use_extend-
+ ed_names, some of their debugging output may be directed
+ to the trace file if the NCURSES_TRACE environment vari-
+ able is set:
+
+ o messages produced in the utility are written to the
+ standard error.
+
+ o messages produced by the underlying library are writ-
+ ten to trace.
+
+ If ncurses is built without tracing, none of the latter
+ are produced, and fewer diagnostics are provided by the
+ command-line utilities.
+
+
+
+ Routines which return a value are designed to be used as
parameters to the _tracef routine.
-
-
PORTABILITY
- These functions are not part of the XSI interface. Some
- other curses implementations are known to have similar,
- undocumented features, but they are not compatible with
+
+ These functions are not part of the XSI interface. Some
+ other curses implementations are known to have similar,
+ undocumented features, but they are not compatible with
ncurses.
+ A few functions are not provided when symbol versioning is
+ used:
-