- Announcing ncurses 6.3
+ Announcing ncurses 6.4
Overview
The ncurses distribution is available at ncurses' homepage:
- ftp://ftp.invisible-island.net/ncurses/ or
+ https://invisible-island.net/archives/ncurses/ or
https://invisible-mirror.net/archives/ncurses/ .
- It is also available via anonymous FTP at the GNU distribution site
+ It is also available at the GNU distribution site
- ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses/ .
+ https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses/ .
Release Notes
- These notes are for ncurses 6.3, released October 21, 2021.
+ These notes are for ncurses 6.4, released December 31, 2022.
This release is designed to be source-compatible with ncurses 5.0
- through 6.2; providing extensions to the application binary interface
+ through 6.3; providing extensions to the application binary interface
(ABI). Although the source can still be configured to support the
ncurses 5 ABI, the reason for the release is to reflect improvements
to the ncurses 6 ABI and the supporting utility programs.
There are, of course, numerous other improvements, listed in this
announcement.
- The most important bug-fixes/improvements dealt with portability
+ The most important bug-fixes/improvements dealt with robustness
issues. The release notes also mention some other bug-fixes, but are
focused on new features and improvements to existing features since
- ncurses 6.2 release.
+ ncurses 6.3 release.
Library improvements
New features
- There are a few new features:
- * A new (experimental) driver, for the Windows Terminal
- configuration is provided.
- * A script is provided which enables OpenBSD users to upgrade their
- system to use ncurses 6.3 (OpenBSD developers are also invited to
- do this).
-
- Additionally, to improve performance other changes (and extensions)
- are provided in this release:
- * modify lib_mouse.c to check for out-of-range button numbers,
- convert those to position reports.
- * add sp-funcs for erasewchar, killwchar.
+ There are no new features in this release.
Other improvements
- These are revised features:
- * modify wgetnstr, wgetn_wstr to improve compatibility with SVr4
- curses in its treatment of interrupt and quit characters
-
- These were done to limit or ultimately deprecate features:
- * mark wgetch-events feature as deprecated.
- + prevent KEY_EVENT from appearing in curses.h unless the
- configure option --enable-wgetch-events is used.
- + modify MKkey_defs.sh to hide ncurses' definition of
- KEY_EVENTS to reduce Visual Studio C++ redefinition warnings.
- * reduce build-warnings by excluding ncurses-internals from
- deprecation warnings.
-
These are improvements to existing features:
- * drop symbols GCC_PRINTF and GCC_SCANF from <curses.h>, to simplify
- use.
- * apply gcc format attribute to prototypes which use a va_list
- parameter rather than a "..." variable-length parameter list.
- * modify <term.h> so that it is not necessary to include <curses.h>
- before <term.h>.
- * provide for wide-characters as background character in wbkgrnd
- * improve parameter-checking for tparm, adding function _nc_tiparm()
- to handle the most-used case, which accepts only numeric
- parameters.
- * use return-value from vsnprintf to reallocate as needed to allow
- for buffers larger than the screen size.
- * add another fflush(stdout) in _nc_flush to handle time-delays in
- the middle of strings such as flash when the application uses
- low-level calls rather than curses.
+ * modify delscreen to more effectively delete all windows on the
+ given screen.
+ * modify wnoutrefresh to call pnoutrefresh if its parameter is a
+ pad, rather than treating it as an error, and modify new_panel to
+ permit its window-parameter to be a pad
+ * modify curses_trace() to show the trace-mask as symbols, e.g.,
+ TRACE_ORDINARY, DEBUG_LEVEL(3).
+ * improve checks for valid mouse events when an intermediate mouse
+ state is not part of the mousemask specified by the caller
+ * allow extended-color number in opts parameter of wattr_on.
+ * improve _tracecchar_t2 formatting of base+combining character.
+ * trim out some unwanted linker options from ncurses*config and .pc
+ files seen in Fedora 36+.
+ * improve shell-scripts with shellcheck
+ * improve use of "trap" in shell scripts, using a script.
+ * modify make-tar.sh scripts to make timestamps more predictable.
These are corrections to existing features:
- * add a check to guard against repeat_char emitting digits which
- could be interpreted as BSD-style padding when --enable-bsdpad is
- configured.
- * check for screen size-change in scr_init and scr_restore, in case
- a screen dump does not match the current screen dimensions
+ * modify misc/gen-pkgconfig.in to allow for the case where the
+ library directory does not yet exist, since this is processed
+ before doing an install
+ * set trailing null on string passed from winsnstr to wins_nwstr.
+ * modify waddch_literal to allow for double-width base character
+ when merging a combining character
Program improvements
Several improvements were made to the utility programs:
- tabs
+ infocmp
- + implement "+m" option
+ + rewrite canonical_name function of infocmp to ensure buffer
+ size
+ + improve readability of long parameterized expressions with
+ the infocmp "-f" option by allowing split before a "%p"
+ marker.
+ + modify verbose-option of infocmp, tic, toe to enable
+ debug-tracing if that is configured.
- tic
+ tabs
+ limit tab-stop values to max-columns
- + add check for duplicate "use=" clauses.
- + add check to report instances where tparm would detect an
- error in an expression.
- + add user-defined capabilities from mintty to Caps-ncurses,
- for checking consistency.
- + improve warning when oc/op do not mention SGR 39/49 for xterm
- compatible XT flag.
- + improve checks for number of parameters of smglp, smgrp,
- smgtp, and smgbp.
- + improve "-c" option to validate the number and type of
- parameters and compare against expected number/type before
- deciding which set of parameter-lists to use in tparm calls.
- + improve check for errors detected in tparm.
- + improve format of output, to ensure that the messages contain
- only printable text.
- + modify to eliminate unnecessary "\" to escape ":" in terminfo
- format.
- + remove check that assumes that none or both parameterized and
- non-parameterized margin-setting capabilities are present.
-
- toe
-
- + modify output of "toe -as" to show first description found
- rather than the last.
- + add a check to ensure that a "termcap file" is text rather
- than binary.
+ tic
+ add consistency check in tic for u6/u7/u8/u9 and NQ
+ capabilities.
tput
-
- + modify to allow multiple commands per line.
- + improve parameter-checking by analyzing all extended string
- capabilities, e.g., as used in the Cs and Ms capabilities of
- the tmux description.
- + make warning messages consistently using alias names when
- those are used, rather than the underlying program's name.
- + improve usage message for aliases such as clear, by
- eliminating tput-specific portions.
- + modify initialization to avoid opening /dev/tty for cases
- other than reset/init, e.g., for clear.
+ corrected use of original tty-modes in init/reset subcommands
Examples
Along with the library and utilities, improvements were made to the
ncurses-examples. Most of this activity aimed at improving the
- test-packages. A few changes are more generally useful, e.g., for the
- main ncurses test-program, and for analyzing traces using the
- tracemunch script:
- * add "-r" option to the dots test-programs, to help with scripting
- a performance comparison.
- * build-fix for test_opaque, for configurations without opaque
- curses structs, e.g., ncurses 5.7.
- * improve tracemunch logic for "RUN" compaction.
- * improve tracemunch's coverage of form/menu/panel libraries.
- * improve tracemunch's checking/reporting the type for the first
- parameter, e.g., "WINDOW*" rather than "#1".
- * modify tracemunch and the panel library to show readable traces
- for panel- and user-pointers.
+ test-packages:
+ * add minimal -h (usage) and -V (version) getopt logic to all
+ ncurses-examples programs.
+ * fix an error in "@" command in test/ncurses.c F-menu
+ * add curses_trace to ifdef's for START_TRACE in test/test.priv.h
+ * improve pthread-configuration for test/worm.c
+ * add setlocale call to several test-programs.
+ * workaround in test/picsmap.c for use of floating point for rgb
+ values by ImageMagick 6.9.11, which appears to use the wrong upper
+ limit.
+ * use static libraries for AdaCurses test-package for Mageia, since
+ no gprbuild package is available.
+ * install Ada95 sample programs in libexecdir, adding a wrapper
+ script to invoke those.
+ * install ncurses-examples programs in libexecdir, adding a wrapper
+ script to invoke those.
There are other new demo/test programs and reusable examples:
- back_ground
- to exercise the wide-character background functions.
+ test/combine
+ demonstrate combining characters
+
+ test/test_delwin
+ demonstrate deleting a window
- move_field
- to demonstrate move_field, and a stub for a corresponding demo
- of dup_field.
+ test/test_mouse
+ observe mouse events in the raw terminal or parsed ncurses
+ modes
- test_tparm
- for checking tparm changes.
+ test/test_unget_wch
+ demonstrate the unget_wch and unget functions
Terminal database
There are several new terminal descriptions:
-
- absolute, att610+cvis, foot, foot-direct, hp98550-color,
- hpterm-color2, hterm, hterm-256color, linux-s, putty+keypad,
- putty+screen, putty-screen, screen.linux-s, scrt/securecrt,
- tmux-direct, vt220+cvis, vt220+cvis8, vt220+pcedit, vt220+vtedit,
- vt220-base, vt52+keypad, xterm+256color2, xterm+88color2,
- xterm-direct16, xterm-direct256, xterm+nofkeys, and
- xterm+nopcfkeys.
+ * mosh
+ * mosh-256color
+ * teken-16color
+ * teken-sc
+ * teken-vt
+ * xgterm
There are many changes to existing terminal descriptions. Some were
updates to several descriptions:
- * correct use-ordering in some xterm-direct flavors
- * fix some sgr inconsistencies in d230c, ibm6153, ibm6154,
- ncrvt100an
- * improve vt50h and vt52 based on DECScope manual
- * use hp+arrows in a few places
- * use hp+pfk-cr in a few places
- * use vt220+cvis in st, terminology, termite since they ignore
- blinking-cursor detail in att610+cvis
+ * make description-fields distinct
+ * fix errata in description fields
+ * add/use several building-blocks:
+ + aixterm+sl
+ + ansi+cpr
+ + apollo+vt132
+ + decid+cpr
+ + ncr260vp+sl
+ + wyse+sl
+ + x10term+sl
+ + xterm+acs
+ + xterm+alt47
while others affected specific descriptions. These were retested, to
take into account changes by their developers:
-
- kitty+common, mlterm3, ms-terminal
+ * kitty
+ * teken
while these are specific fixes based on reviewing documentation, user
reports, or warnings from tic:
- aaa+dec, aaa+rv
- correct rmacs/smacs
+ att610+cvis0
+ amended note as per documentation for att610, att620, att730
- aaa+rv
- correct sgr
+ kon, kon2, jfbterm
+ revise to undo "linux2.6" change to smacs/rmacs/enacs
- icl6404
- correct csr
+ st-0.6
+ add dim, ecma+strikeout
- kitty
- use att610+cvis, xterm+tmux and ansi+enq
+ foot+base
+ add xterm+sl-alt
- konsole-base
- re-enable "bel"
+ dec+sl
+ correct dsl in dec+sl
- linux2.6
- fix pound-sign mapping in acsc
+ mintty and tmux
+ correct setal in mintty/tmux entries, add to vte-2018
- linux3.0
- modify to reflect default mapping of shift-tab by kbd 1.14
-
- pccons
- fill in some missing pieces, to make it comparable to the vt220
- entry
+ nsterm
+ modify nsterm to use xterm+alt1049
putty
- use vt100+fnkeys, add rep
-
- screen
- use vt100+enq
+ modify putty to use xterm+alt1049
- terminator
- corrected tsl capability
-
- ti916
- correct cup
-
- tmux
- change kbs to ^?
-
- vt220
- use vt220+cvis
-
- vt420+lrmm
- add smglp and smgrp
-
- vt420
- use vt420+lrmm
-
- xterm-new
- add nel
-
- xterm-vt52
- use vt52+keypad
+ vte-2018
+ add blink and setal
A few entries use extensions (user-defined terminal capabilities):
- * add shifted Linux console keys in linux+sfkeys entry for
- screen.linux
- * add Smulx to alacritty
- * add kbeg to xterm+keypad to accommodate termcap applications
- * add extensions in xterm+tmux and ecma+strikeout to ms-terminal,
- but cancel the non-working Cr and Ms capabilities
+ * use ansi+enq and decid+cpr in cases where the terminal probably
+ supported the u6-u9 extension
+ * remove u6-u9 from teken-2018
+ * use NQ to flag entries where the terminal does not support query
+ and response
+ * add/use bracketed+paste to help identify terminals supporting this
+ xterm feature
+ * modify samples for xterm mouse 1002/1003 modes to use 1006 mode,
+ and also provide for focus in/out responses
+ * xterm patch #371 supports DEC-compatible status-line. add dec+sl
+ to xterm-new, per xterm #371, add xterm-p371, add xterm-p370, for
+ use in older terminals, and set "xterm-new" to "xterm-p370" (to
+ ease adoption).
Documentation
features and show how they evolved, there are corrections,
clarifications, etc.:
* Corrections:
- + make opts extension for getcchar work as documented for
- ncurses 6.1, adding "-g" flag to demo_new_pair to illustrate.
- + modify tset "-q" option to refrain from modifying terminal
- modes, to match the documentation.
+ + remove a stray '/' from description of %g in terminfo(5).
+ + correct/improve font-formatting in curs_getch.3x, as well as
+ other manual pages.
* New/improved history and portability sections:
- + improve documentation for tparm and static/dynamic variables.
- + add history note to curs_scanw.3x for <stdarg.h> and
- <varargs.h>
- + add history note to curs_printw.3x for <stdarg.h> and
- <varargs.h>
- + add portability note to ncurses.3x regarding <stdarg.h>
- + add historical notes to tput, curses-terminfo and
- curses-color manpages based on source-code for SVr2, SVr3 and
- SVr4.
- + improve history section for tset manpage based on the 1BSD
- tarball, which preceded BSD's SCCS checkins by more than
- three years.
+ + add portability notes for delscreen and delwin in manual.
+ + improve curs_slk.3x discussion of extensions and portability
* Other improvements:
- + explain in ncurses.3x that functions in the tinfo library do
- not rely upon wide-characters.
- + improve manual page for panel library, extending the
- portability section as well as documenting error-returns.
- + add section on margins to terminfo.5, adapted from X/Open
- Curses.
- + improve man/term.5 section on legacy storage format.
- + add a note in terminfo.5 explaining that no-parameter strings
- such as sgr0 or cnorm should not be used with tparm.
- + improve description of BSD-style padding in curs_termcap.3x
- + improve discussion of padding versus tparm and tputs in
- man/curs_terminfo.3x
- + add a note in manual page to explain ungetch vs unget_wch.
- + improve description of error-returns in waddch and waddnstr
- manual pages.
+ + improve curs_bkgd.3x, explaining that bkgdset can affect
+ results for bkgd
+ + add note on portable memory-leak checking in curs_memleaks.3x
+ + expanded description in resizeterm.3x
+ + add section on releasing memory to curs_termcap.3x and
+ curs_terminfo.3x manpages.
+ + add clarification of the scope of dynamic variables in
+ terminfo(5).
+ + improve formatting of ncurses-intro.html and hackguide.html
+ + improve curs_clear.3x links to other pages
+ + update ncurses-howto, making documentation fixes along with
+ corrections to example programs.
+ + use newer version 1.36 of gnathtml for generating Ada html
+ files.
+ + update external links in Ada95.html
There are no new manual pages (all of the manual page updates are to
existing pages).
- Some of the improvements are more subtle, relating to the way the
- information is presented. For instance, hyphenation is suppressed in
- the HTML files generated from manual pages because an upgrade to groff
- gave noticeably poorer results, interfering with the process of
- creating links between the resulting webpages.
-
Interesting bug-fixes
- While there were many bugs fixed during development of ncurses 6.3,
+ While there were many bugs fixed during development of ncurses 6.4,
only a few (the reason for this release) were both important and
interesting. Most of the bug-fixes were for local issues which did not
affect compatibility across releases. Since those are detailed in the
NEWS file no elaboration is needed here.
- The interesting bugs were:
- * modify wbkgd and wbkgrnd to avoid storing a null in the background
- character, because it may be used in cases where the corresponding
- 0x80 is not treated as a null.
- This was a regression introduced in ncurses 6.2 (reported on the
- mailing list), for which the workaround was to specify a blank for
- the background character.
- * remove output-related checks for nl/nonl (also reported on the
- mailing list).
- * improve tparm implementation of %P and %g, more closely matching
- SVr4 terminfo. Those denote static and dynamic variables in
- terminfo expressions.
- Exactly what those terms meant was never documented before in any
- implementation of curses, aside from source code. Unlike the other
- two fixes, the problem was discovered while studying OpenBSD's
- version of tset.
+ The interesting bugs were those dealing with memory leaks and buffer
+ overflows. Although the utilities are designed for text files (which
+ they do properly), some choose to test them with non-text files.
+ * Text files contain no embedded nulls. Also, they end with a
+ newline. Feeding tic non-text files exposed a few cases where the
+ program did not check for those issues. As a result, further
+ processing of the input found limit-checks whose assumptions were
+ invalid.
+ * Fixing the limit-checks (first) found a problem with tic managing
+ the list of strings in a terminal description. In merging two
+ terminal descriptions (i.e., the "use=" feature), tic was not
+ allocating a complete copy. A quick repair for that introduced a
+ memory leak.
+ * The checks for non-text files are improved (i.e., embedded nulls
+ in the input file will cause tic to reject it rather than
+ attempting to process it).
+ * The string allocations in tic are likewise improved.
Configuration changes
Major changes
- There are no major changes. Several new options were added to ease
- integration of packages with systems using different versions of GNAT
- and ncurses. Also, improvements were made to configure checks.
+ There are no major changes. No new options were added. Several
+ improvements were made to configure checks.
Configuration options
There are a few new/modified configure options:
- --enable-fvisibility
- new configure option and check for gcc -fvisibility=hidden
- feature
-
- --enable-leaks
- corrected to allow turning leak-checking off later in a set of
- options.
-
- --enable-stdnoreturn
- new configure option makes the _Noreturn keyword optional to
- ease transition.
-
- --disable-pkg-ldflags
- revised option also controls whether $LDFLAGS from the build is
- provided in "-config" and ".pc" files.
-
- --disable-root-access
- add configure option which tells ncurses to disallow most
- file-opens by setuid processes.
+ --with-abi-version
+ add ABI 7 defaults to configure script.
- --disable-wattr-macros
- changed default to help packagers who reuse wide ncursesw
- header file with non-wide ncurses library.
+ --with-caps
+ add warning in configure script if file specified for
+ "--with-caps" does not exist.
- --with-pkg-config-libdir
- revised option uses the actual search path from pkg-config or
- pkgconf using the output from --debug.
+ --with-manpage-format
+ bzip2 and xz compression are now supported
- --with-ada-libname
- --with-form-libname
- --with-menu-libname
- --with-panel-libname
- new several --with-xxx-libname options, to help with pkgsrc
+ --with-xterm-kbs
+ add check/warning in configure script if option
+ "--with-xterm-kbs" is missing or inconsistent
Portability
Many of the portability changes are implemented via the configure
script:
- * add a special case in the configure script to work around one of
- the build-time breakages reported for OpenBSD 6 here:
-
- https://www.mail-archive.com/bugs@openbsd.org/msg13200.html
- * modify configure check for libtool to prevent accidental use of an
- OpenBSD program which uses the same name.
- * modify configuration checks for build-time tic/infocmp to use
- AC_CHECK_TOOL. That can still be overridden by --with-tic-path and
- --with-infocmp-path when fallbacks are used, but even if not using
- fallbacks, the improved check may help with cross-compiling.
- * relax modification-time comparison in CF_LINK_FUNCS to allow it to
- accept link() function with NFS filesystems which change the mtime
- on the link target, e.g., several BSD systems.
- * modify configure check for c89/c99 aliases of clang to use its
- -std option instead, because some platforms, in particular macOS,
- do not provide workable c89/c99 aliases.
- * modify CF_NCURSES_CONFIG to work around Xcode's c99 "-W" option,
- which conflicts with conventional use for passing linker options.
- * modify configure scripts to filter out redefinitions of
- _XOPEN_SOURCE, e.g., for NetBSD which generally supports 500, but
- 600 is needed for ncursesw.
+ * amend configure option's auto-search to account for systems where
+ none of the directories known to pkg-config exist
+ * corrected regex needed for older pkg-config used in Solaris 10
+ * improve handling of --with-pkg-config-libdir option, allowing for
+ the case where either $PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR or the option value has a
+ colon-separated list of directories
+ * if the --with-pkg-config-libdir option is not given, use
+ ${libdir}/pkgconfig as a default
+ * improve search-path check for pkg-config, e.g., for Debian testing
+ which installs pkg-config with architecture-prefixes.
+ * build-fix for cross-compiling to MingW, conditionally add -lssp
+ * improve configure check for getttynam
+ * fixes to build with dietlibc:
+ + add configure check for fpathconf
+ + add configure check for math sine/cosine, needed in
+ test/tclock, and eliminate pow() from test/hanoi
+ + use wcsnlen as an alternative to wmemchr if it is not found
+ * modify configure macro CF_BUILD_CC to check if the build-compiler
+ works, rather than that it is different from the cross-compiler,
+ e.g., to accommodate a compiler which can be used for either
+ purpose with different flags
+ * modify configure/scripts to work around interference by GNU grep
+ 3.8
Here are some of the other portability fixes:
- * change configure-check and source-code for gcc's noreturn
- attribute to assume it is a prefix rather than suffix, matching
- c11's _Noreturn convention.
- * modify mk-1st.awk to account for extra-suffix configure option.
- * build-fix for termsort module when configured with termcap.
- * modify configure script and makefiles to support ".PHONY" make
- program feature.
- * amend libtool configuration to add dependency for install.tic,
- etc., in ncurses/Makefile on the lower-level libraries.
- * modify Ada95 source-generation utility to write to a file given as
- parameter rather than to the standard output, allowing builds with
- MinGW.
- * amend tic/infocmp check to allow for the respective tool's
- absence.
- * build-fixes for gnat 10.1.1, whose gnatmake drops integration with
- gprbuild.
- * correct configure version-check/warning for g++ to allow for 10.x
+ * change man_db.renames to template, to handle ncurses*-config
+ script with the --extra-suffix configure option.
+ * update CF_XOPEN_SOURCE macro, adding variants "gnueabi" and
+ "gnueabihf" to get _DEFAULT_SOURCE special case, as well as adding
+ GNU libc suffixes for "abi64", "abin32", "x32" to distinguish it
+ from other libc flavors.
+ * work around musl's nonstandard use of feature test macros by
+ adding a definition for NCURSES_WIDECHAR to the generated ".pc"
+ and *-config files.
+ * use "command -v" rather than "type" in Ada95/gen/Makefile.in to
+ fix a portability issue.
_________________________________________________________________
Features of ncurses
Beta versions of ncurses are made available at
- ftp://ftp.invisible-island.net/ncurses/current/ and
+ https://invisible-island.net/archives/ncurses/current/ and
https://invisible-mirror.net/archives/ncurses/current/ .
Patches to the current release are made available at
- ftp://ftp.invisible-island.net/ncurses/6.2/ and
- https://invisible-mirror.net/archives/ncurses/6.2/ .
+ https://invisible-island.net/archives/ncurses/6.3/ and
+ https://invisible-mirror.net/archives/ncurses/6.3/ .
There is an archive of the mailing list here:
projects / ncurses.git / blobdiff