1 -- $Id: INSTALL,v 1.52 2002/01/12 22:56:44 tom 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. Some, but not all of the
281 programs are useful in this configuration, e.g., reset and tput versus
285 Disable function-extensions. Configure ncurses without the functions
286 that are not specified by XSI. See ncurses/modules for the exact
287 list of library modules that would be suppressed.
290 Compile without hashmap scrolling-optimization code. This algorithm is
294 For testing, compile-in code that frees memory that normally would not
295 be freed, to simplify analysis of memory-leaks.
298 For testing, use functions rather than macros. The program will run
299 more slowly, but it is simpler to debug. This makes a header file
300 "nomacros.h". See also the --enable-expanded option.
303 If you are installing ncurses on a system which contains another
304 development version of curses, or which could be confused by the loader
305 for another version, we recommend that you leave out the link to
306 -lcurses. The ncurses library is always available as -lncurses.
307 Disabling overwrite also causes the ncurses header files to be
308 installed into a subdirectory, e.g., /usr/local/include/ncurses,
309 rather than the include directory. This makes it simpler to avoid
310 compile-time conflicts with other versions of curses.h
312 --disable-root-environ
313 Compile with environment restriction, so certain environment variables
314 are not available when running as root, or via a setuid/setgid
315 application. These are (for example $TERMINFO) those that allow the
316 search path for the terminfo or termcap entry to be customized.
318 --disable-scroll-hints
319 Compile without scroll-hints code. This option is ignored when
320 hashmap scrolling is configured, which is the default.
322 --enable-add-ons=DIR...
323 This is used to check if this package is a glibc add-on. This is used
324 only by the glibc makefiles.
327 For testing, compile-in assertion code. This is used only for a few
328 places where ncurses cannot easily recover by returning an error code.
330 --enable-broken_linker
331 A few platforms have what we consider a broken linker: it cannot link
332 objects from an archive solely by referring to data objects in those
333 files, but requires a function reference. This configure option
334 changes several data references to functions to work around this
337 NOTE: With ncurses 5.1, this may not be necessary, since we are
338 told that some linkers interpret uninitialized global data as a
339 different type of reference which behaves as described above. We have
340 explicitly initialized all of the global data to work around the
344 Recognize BSD-style prefix padding. Some ancient BSD programs (such as
345 nethack) call tputs("50") to implement delays.
348 Compile with experimental $COLORFGBG code. That environment variable
349 is set by some terminal emulators as a hint to applications, by
350 advertising the default foreground and background colors. During
351 initialization, ncurses sets color pair 0 to match this.
354 The curses interface as documented in XSI is rather old, in fact
355 including features that precede ANSI C. The prototypes generally do
356 not make effective use of "const". When using stricter compilers (or
357 gcc with appropriate warnings), you may see warnings about the mismatch
358 between const and non-const data. We provide a configure option which
359 changes the interfaces to use const - quieting these warnings and
360 reflecting the actual use of the parameters more closely. The ncurses
361 library uses the symbol NCURSES_CONST for these instances of const,
362 and if you have asked for compiler warnings, will add gcc's const-qual
363 warning. There will still be warnings due to subtle inconsistencies
364 in the interface, but at a lower level.
366 NOTE: configuring ncurses with this option may detract from the
367 portability of your applications by encouraging you to use const in
368 places where the XSI curses interface would not allow them. Similar
369 issues arise when porting to SVr4 curses, which uses const in even
373 Use the option --disable-echo to make the build-log less verbose by
374 suppressing the display of the compile and link commands. This makes
375 it easier to see the compiler warnings. (You can always use "make -n"
376 to see the options that are used).
379 For testing, generate functions for certain macros to make them visible
380 as such to the debugger. See also the --disable-macros option.
383 Use the 4.4BSD getcap code if available, or a bundled version of it to
384 fetch termcap entries. Entries read in this way cannot use (make
385 cross-references to) the terminfo tree, but it is faster than reading
388 --enable-getcap-cache
389 Cache translated termcaps under the directory $HOME/.terminfo
391 NOTE: this sounds good - it makes ncurses run faster the second time.
392 But look where the data comes from - an /etc/termcap containing lots of
393 entries that are not up to date. If you configure with this option and
394 forget to install the terminfo database before running an ncurses
395 application, you will end up with a hidden terminfo database that
396 generally does not support color and will miss some function keys.
399 Compile-in cursor-optimization code that uses hard-tabs. We would make
400 this a standard feature except for the concern that the terminfo entry
401 may not be accurate, or that your stty settings have disabled the use
405 Compile-in support for the $NCURSES_NO_PADDING environment variable,
406 which allows you to suppress the effect of non-mandatory padding in
407 terminfo entries. This is the default, unless you have disabled the
411 Use rpath option when generating shared libraries, and with some
412 restrictions when linking the corresponding programs. This applies
413 mainly to systems using the GNU linker (read the manpage).
415 --enable-safe-sprintf
416 Compile with experimental safe-sprintf code. You may consider using
417 this if you are building ncurses for a system that has neither
418 vsnprintf() or vsprintf(). It is slow, however.
421 Compile support for ncurses' SIGWINCH handler. If your application has
422 its own SIGWINCH handler, ncurses will not use its own. The ncurses
423 handler causes wgetch() to return KEY_RESIZE when the screen-size
424 changes. This option is the default, unless you have disabled the
428 If your system supports symbolic links, make tic use symbolic links
429 rather than hard links to save diskspace when writing aliases in the
433 Compile-in support for user-definable terminal capabilities. Use the
434 -x option of tic and infocmp to treat unrecognized terminal
435 capabilities as user-defined strings. This option is the default,
436 unless you have disabled the extended functions.
439 Compile in support for reading terminal descriptions from termcap if no
440 match is found in the terminfo database. See also the --enable-getcap
441 and --enable-getcap-cache options.
444 Turn on GCC compiler warnings. There should be only a few.
447 Compile with experimental wide-character code. This makes a different
448 version of the libraries (e.g., libncursesw.so), which stores
449 characters in 16-bits. We provide a simple UTF-8 driver and test
450 program to use this feature with terminals that can display UTF-8.
452 NOTE: applications compiled with this configuration are not compatible
453 with those built for 8-bit characters. You cannot simply make a
454 symbolic link to equate libncurses.so with libncursesw.so
457 Compile-in support experimental xmc (magic cookie) code.
459 --with-ada-compiler=CMD
460 Specify the Ada95 compiler command (default "gnatmake")
462 --with-ada-include=DIR
463 Tell where to install the Ada includes (default:
464 PREFIX/lib/ada/adainclude)
466 --with-ada-objects=DIR
467 Tell where to install the Ada objects (default: PREFIX/lib/ada/adalib)
470 If --without-cxx is specified, override the type used for the "bool"
471 declared in curses.h (normally the type is automatically chosen to
472 correspond with that in <stdbool.h>, or defaults to platform-specific
476 If cross-compiling, specify a host C compiler, which is needed to
477 compile a few utilties which generate source modules for ncurses.
478 If you do not give this option, the configure script checks if the
479 $BUILD_CC variable is set, and otherwise defaults to gcc or cc.
481 --with-build-cflags=XXX
482 If cross-compiling, specify the host C compiler-flags. You might need
483 to do this if the target compiler has unusual flags which confuse the
486 --with-build-ldflags=XXX
487 If cross-compiling, specify the host linker-flags. You might need to
488 do this if the target linker has unusual flags which confuse the host
491 --with-build-libs=XXX
492 If cross-compiling, the host libraries. You might need to do this if
493 the target environment requires unusual libraries.
496 Specify an alternate terminfo capabilities file, which makes the
497 configure script look for "include/Caps.XXX". A few systems, e.g.,
498 AIX 4.x use the same overall file-format as ncurses for terminfo
499 data, but use different alignments within the tables to support
500 legacy applications. For those systems, you can configure ncurses
501 to use a terminfo database which is compatible with the native
505 Specify the terminfo source file to install. Usually you will wish
506 to install ncurses' default (misc/terminfo.src). Certain systems
507 have special requirements, e.g, OS/2 EMX has a customized terminfo
511 For testing, compile and link with Conor Cahill's dbmalloc library.
514 Generate debug-libraries (default). These are named by adding "_g"
515 to the root, e.g., libncurses_g.a
517 --with-default-terminfo-dir=XXX
518 Specify the default terminfo database directory. This is normally
519 DATADIR/terminfo, e.g., /usr/share/terminfo.
522 Enable experimental/development options. This does not count those
523 that change the interface, such as --enable-widec.
526 For testing, compile and link with Gray Watson's dmalloc library.
529 Specify a list of fallback terminal descriptions which will be
530 compiled into the ncurses library. See CONFIGURING FALLBACK ENTRIES.
533 use Alessandro Rubini's GPM library to provide mouse support on the
536 --with-install-prefix=XXX
537 Allows you to specify an alternate location for installing ncurses
538 after building it. The value you specify is prepended to the "real"
539 install location. This simplifies making binary packages.
541 NOTE: a few systems build shared libraries with fixed pathnames; this
542 option probably will not work for those configurations.
545 Generate libraries with libtool. If this option is selected, then
546 it overrides all other library model specifications.
548 --with-manpage-format=XXX
549 Tell the configure script how you would like to install man-pages. The
550 option value must be one of these: gzip, compress, BSDI, normal,
551 formatted. If you do not give this option, the configure script
552 attempts to determine which is the case.
554 --with-manpage-renames=XXX
555 Tell the configure script that you wish to rename the manpages while
556 installing. Currently the only distribution which does this is
557 the Linux Debian. The option value specifies the name of a file
558 that lists the renamed files, e.g., $srcdir/man/man_db.renames
560 --with-manpage-symlinks
561 Tell the configure script that you wish to make symbolic links in the
562 man-directory for aliases to the man-pages. This is the default, but
563 can be disabled for systems that provide this automatically. Doing
564 this on systems that do not support symbolic links will result in
565 copying the man-page for each alias.
568 Tell the configure script that you with to preprocess the manpages
569 by running them through tbl to generate tables understandable by
573 Override type of ospeed variable, which is part of the termcap
574 compatibility interface. In termcap, this is a 'short', which works
575 for a wide range of baudrates because ospeed is not the actual speed
576 but the encoded value, e.g., B9600 would be a small number such as 13.
577 However the encoding scheme originally allowed for values "only" up to
578 38400bd. A newer set of definitions past 38400bd is not encoded as
579 compactly, and is not guaranteed to fit into a short (see the function
580 cfgetospeed(), which returns a speed_t for this reason). In practice,
581 applications that required knowledge of the ospeed variable, i.e.,
582 those using termcap, do not use the higher speeds. Your application
583 (or system, in general) may or may not.
586 Generate normal (i.e., static) libraries (default).
589 Generate profile-libraries These are named by adding "_p" to the root,
593 Compile-in RCS identifiers. Most of the C files have an identifier.
596 Generate shared-libraries. The names given depend on the system for
597 which you are building, typically using a ".so" suffix, along with
598 symbolic links that refer to the release version.
600 NOTE: Unless you override the configure script by setting the $CFLAGS
601 environment variable, these will not be built with the -g debugging
604 --with-shlib-version=XXX
605 Specify whether to use the release or ABI version for shared libraries.
606 This is normally chosen automatically based on the type of system
607 which you are building on. We use it for testing the configure script.
609 --with-system-type=XXX
610 For testing, override the derived host system-type which is used to
611 decide things such as the linker commands used to build shared
612 libraries. This is normally chosen automatically based on the type of
613 system which you are building on. We use it for testing the configure
616 --with-terminfo-dirs=XXX
617 Specify a search-list of terminfo directories which will be compiled
618 into the ncurses library (default: DATADIR/terminfo)
621 When building the ncurses library, organize this as two parts: the
622 curses library (libncurses) and the low-level terminfo library
623 (libtinfo). This is done to accommodate applications that use only
624 the latter. The terminfo library is about half the size of the total.
627 Specify a search-list of termcap files which will be compiled into the
628 ncurses library (default: /etc/termcap:/usr/share/misc/termcap)
631 Suppress the configure script's check for Ada95, do not build the
632 Ada95 binding and related demo.
635 Don't install the ncurses header with the name "curses.h". Rather,
636 install as "ncurses.h" and modify the installed headers and manpages
640 XSI curses declares "bool" as part of the interface. C++ also declares
641 "bool". Neither specifies the size and type of booleans, but both
642 insist on the same name. We chose to accommodate this by making the
643 configure script check for the size and type (e.g., unsigned or signed)
644 that your C++ compiler uses for booleans. If you do not wish to use
645 ncurses with C++, use this option to tell the configure script to not
646 adjust ncurses bool to match C++.
648 --without-cxx-binding
649 Suppress the configure script's check for C++, do not build the
650 C++ binding and related demo.
653 Tell the configure script to suppress the build of ncurses' application
654 programs (e.g., tic). The test applications will still be built if you
655 type "make", though not if you simply do "make install".
658 COMPATIBILITY WITH OLDER VERSIONS OF NCURSES:
659 --------------------------------------------
661 Because ncurses implements the X/Open Curses Specification, its interface
662 is fairly stable. That does not mean the interface does not change.
663 Changes are made to the documented interfaces when we find differences
664 between ncurses and X/Open or implementations which they certify (such as
665 Solaris). We add extensions to those interfaces to solve problems not
666 addressed by the original curses design, but those must not conflict with
667 the X/Open documentation.
669 Here are some of the major interface changes, and related problems which
670 you may encounter when building a system with different versions of
673 5.2 (October 21, 2000)
676 + revert termcap ospeed variable to 'short' (see discussion of the
677 --with-ospeed configure option).
682 + made the extended terminal capabilities
683 (configure --enable-tcap-names) a standard feature. This should
684 be transparent to applications that do not require it.
686 + removed the trace() function and related trace support from the
689 + modified curses.h.in, undef'ing some symbols to avoid conflict
692 Added extensions: assume_default_colors().
694 5.0 (October 23, 1999)
697 + implemented the wcolor_set() and slk_color() functions.
699 + move macro winch to a function, to hide details of struct ldat
701 + corrected prototypes for slk_* functions, using chtype rather than
704 + the slk_attr_{set,off,on} functions need an additional void*
705 parameter according to XSI.
707 + modified several prototypes to correspond with 1997 version of X/Open
708 Curses: [w]attr_get(), [w]attr_set(), border_set() have different
709 parameters. Some functions were renamed or misspelled:
710 erase_wchar(), in_wchntr(), mvin_wchntr(). Some developers have used
713 Added extensions: keybound(), curses_version().
715 Terminfo database changes:
717 + change translation for termcap 'rs' to terminfo 'rs2', which is
718 the documented equivalent, rather than 'rs1'.
720 The problems are subtler in recent releases.
722 a) This release provides users with the ability to define their own
723 terminal capability extensions, like termcap. To accomplish this,
724 we redesigned the TERMTYPE struct (in term.h). Very few
725 applications use this struct. They must be recompiled to work with
728 a) If you use the extended terminfo names (i.e., you used configure
729 --enable-tcap-names), the resulting terminfo database can have some
730 entries which are not readable by older versions of ncurses. This
731 is a bug in the older versions:
733 + the terminfo database stores booleans, numbers and strings in
734 arrays. The capabilities that are listed in the arrays are
735 specified by X/Open. ncurses recognizes a number of obsolete and
736 extended names which are stored past the end of the specified
739 + a change to read_entry.c in 951001 made the library do an lseek()
740 call incorrectly skipping data which is already read from the
741 string array. This happens when the number of strings in the
742 terminfo data file is greater than STRCOUNT, the number of
743 specified and obsolete or extended strings.
745 + as part of alignment with the X/Open final specification, in the
746 990109 patch we added two new terminfo capabilities:
747 set_a_attributes and set_pglen_inch). This makes the indices for
748 the obsolete and extended capabilities shift up by 2.
750 + the last two capabilities in the obsolete/extended list are memu
751 and meml, which are found in most terminfo descriptions for xterm.
753 When trying to read this terminfo entry, the spurious lseek()
754 causes the library to attempt to read the final portion of the
755 terminfo data (the text of the string capabilities) 4 characters
756 past its starting point, and reads 4 characters too few. The
757 library rejects the data, and applications are unable to
758 initialize that terminal type.
760 FIX: remove memu and meml from the xterm description. They are
761 obsolete, not used by ncurses. (It appears that the feature was
762 added to xterm to make it more like hpterm).
764 This is not a problem if you do not use the -x option of tic to
765 create a terminfo database with extended names. Note that the
766 user-defined terminal capabilities are not affected by this bug,
767 since they are stored in a table after the older terminfo data ends,
768 and are invisible to the older libraries.
770 c) Some developers did not wish to use the C++ binding, and used the
771 configure --without-cxx option. This causes problems if someone
772 uses the ncurses library from C++ because that configure test
773 determines the type for C++'s bool and makes ncurses match it, since
774 both C++ and curses are specified to declare bool. Calling ncurses
775 functions with the incorrect type for bool will cause execution
776 errors. In 5.0 we added a configure option "--without-cxx-binding"
777 which controls whether the binding itself is built and installed.
782 + correct prototype for termattrs() as per XPG4 version 2.
784 + add placeholder prototypes for color_set(), erasewchar(),
785 term_attrs(), wcolor_set() as per XPG4 version 2.
787 + add macros getcur[xy] getbeg[xy] getpar[xy], which are defined in
790 New extensions: keyok() and define_key().
792 Terminfo database changes:
794 + corrected definition in curses.h for ACS_LANTERN, which was 'I'
799 We added these extensions: use_default_colors(). Also added
800 configure option --enable-const, to support the use of const where
801 X/Open should have, but did not, specify.
803 The terminfo database content changed the representation of color for
804 most entries that use ANSI colors. SVr4 curses treats the setaf/setab
805 and setf/setb capabilities differently, interchanging the red/blue
806 colors in the latter.
808 4.0 (December 24, 1996)
810 We bumped to version 4.0 because the newly released dynamic loader
811 (ld.so.1.8.5) on Linux did not load shared libraries whose ABI and REL
812 versions were inconsistent. At that point, ncurses ABI was 3.4 and the
813 REL was 1.9.9g, so we made them consistent.
815 1.9.9g (December 1, 1996)
817 This fixed most of the problems with 1.9.9e, and made these interface
820 + remove tparam(), which had been provided for compatibility with
821 some termcap. tparm() is standard, and does not conflict with
822 application's fallback for missing tparam().
824 + turn off hardware echo in initscr(). This changes the sense of the
825 echo() function, which was initialized to echoing rather than
826 nonechoing (the latter is specified). There were several other
827 corrections to the terminal I/O settings which cause applications to
830 + implemented several functions (such as attr_on()) which were
831 available only as macros.
833 + corrected several typos in curses.h.in (i.e., the mvXXXX macros).
835 + corrected prototypes for delay_output(),
836 has_color, immedok() and idcok().
838 + corrected misspelled getbkgd(). Some applications used the
841 + added _yoffset to WINDOW. The size of WINDOW does not impact
842 applications, since they use only pointers to WINDOW structs.
844 These changes were made to the terminfo database:
846 + removed boolean 'getm' which was available as an extended name.
848 We added these extensions: wresize(), resizeterm(), has_key() and
851 1.9.9e (March 24, 1996)
853 not recommended (a last-minute/untested change left the forms and
854 menus libraries unusable since they do not repaint the screen).
855 Foreground/background colors are combined incorrectly, working properly
856 only on a black background. When this was released, the X/Open
857 specification was available only in draft form.
859 Some applications (such as lxdialog) were "fixed" to work with the
860 incorrect color scheme.
863 IF YOU ARE A SYSTEM INTEGRATOR:
864 ------------------------------
866 Beginning with 1.9.9, the ncurses distribution includes both a tset
867 utility and /usr/share/tabset directory. If you are installing ncurses,
868 it is no longer either necessary or desirable to install tset-jv.
870 Configuration and Installation:
872 Configure with --prefix=/usr to make the install productions put
873 libraries and headers in the correct locations (overwriting any
874 previous curses libraries and headers). This will put the terminfo
875 hierarchy under /usr/share/terminfo; you may want to override this with
876 --datadir=/usr/share/misc; terminfo and tabset are installed under the
879 Please configure the ncurses library in a pure-terminfo mode; that
880 is, with the --disable-termcap option. This will make the ncurses
881 library smaller and faster. The ncurses library includes a termcap
882 emulation that queries the terminfo database, so even applications
883 that use raw termcap to query terminal characteristics will win
884 (providing you recompile and relink them!).
886 If you must configure with termcap fallback enabled, you may also
887 wish to use the --enable-getcap option. This option speeds up
888 termcap-based startups, at the expense of not allowing personal
889 termcap entries to reference the terminfo tree. See the code in
890 ncurses/tinfo/read_termcap.c for details.
892 Note that if you have $TERMCAP set, ncurses will use that value
893 to locate termcap data. In particular, running from xterm will
894 set $TERMCAP to the contents of the xterm's termcap entry.
895 If ncurses sees that, it will not examine /etc/termcap.
899 The terminfo file assumes that Shift-Tab generates \E[Z (the ECMA-48
900 reverse-tabulation sequence) rather than ^I. Here are the loadkeys -d
901 mappings that will set this up:
904 alt keycode 15 = Meta_Tab
905 shift keycode 15 = F26
908 Naming the Console Terminal
910 In various Linuxes (and possibly elsewhere) there has been a practice
911 of designating the system console driver type as `console'. Please
912 do not do this any more! It complicates peoples' lives, because it
913 can mean that several different terminfo entries from different
914 operating systems all logically want to be called `console'.
916 Please pick a name unique to your console driver and set that up
917 in the /etc/inittab table or local equivalent. Send the entry to the
918 terminfo maintainer (listed in the misc/terminfo file) to be included
919 in the terminfo file, if it's not already there. See the
920 term(7) manual page included with this distribution for more on
921 conventions for choosing type names.
923 Here are some recommended primary console names:
925 linux -- Linux console driver
930 If you are responsible for integrating ncurses for one of these
931 distribution, please either use the recommended name or get back
932 to us explaining why you don't want to, so we can work out nomenclature
933 that will make users' lives easier rather than harder.
936 RECENT XTERM VERSIONS:
937 ---------------------
939 The terminfo database file included with this distribution assumes you
940 are running an XFree86 xterm based on X11R6 (i.e., xterm-r6). The
941 earlier X11R5 entry (xterm-r5) is provided as well.
943 If you are running XFree86 version 3.2 (actually 3.1.2F and up), you
944 should consider using the xterm-xf86-v32 (or later, the most recent
945 version is always named "xterm-xfree86") entry, which adds ANSI color
946 and the VT220 capabilities which have been added in XFree86. If you
947 are running a mixed network, however, where this terminal description
948 may be used on an older xterm, you may have problems, since
949 applications that assume these capabilities will produce incorrect
950 output on the older xterm (e.g., highlighting is not cleared).
953 CONFIGURING FALLBACK ENTRIES:
954 ----------------------------
956 In order to support operation of ncurses programs before the terminfo
957 tree is accessible (that is, in single-user mode or at OS installation
958 time) the ncurses library can be compiled to include an array of
959 pre-fetched fallback entries.
961 These entries are checked by setupterm() only when the conventional
962 fetches from the terminfo tree and the termcap fallback (if configured)
963 have been tried and failed. Thus, the presence of a fallback will not
964 shadow modifications to the on-disk entry for the same type, when that
967 By default, there are no entries on the fallback list. After you
968 have built the ncurses suite for the first time, you can change
969 the list (the process needs infocmp(1)). To do so, use the script
970 MKfallback.sh. A configure script option --with-fallbacks does this
971 (it accepts a comma-separated list of the names you wish, and does
972 not require a rebuild).
974 If you wanted (say) to have linux, vt100, and xterm fallbacks, you
975 would use the commands
978 MKfallback.sh linux vt100 xterm >fallback.c
980 Then just rebuild and reinstall the library as you would normally.
981 You can restore the default empty fallback list with
983 MKfallback.sh >fallback.c
985 The overhead for an empty fallback list is one trivial stub function.
986 Any non-empty fallback list is const-ed and therefore lives in sharable
987 text space. You can look at the comment trailing each initializer in
988 the generated ncurses/fallback.c file to see the core cost of the
989 fallbacks. A good rule of thumb for modern vt100-like entries is that
990 each one will cost about 2.5K of text space.
993 BSD CONVERSION NOTES:
996 If you need to support really ancient BSD programs, you probably
997 want to configure with the --enable-bsdpad option. What this does
998 is enable code in tputs() that recognizes a numeric prefix on a
999 capability as a request for that much trailing padding in milliseconds.
1000 There are old BSD programs that do things like tputs("50").
1002 (If you are distributing ncurses as a support-library component of
1003 an application you probably want to put the remainder of this section
1004 in the package README file.)
1006 The following note applies only if you have configured ncurses with
1009 ------------------------------- CUT HERE --------------------------------
1011 If you are installing this application privately (either because you
1012 have no root access or want to experiment with it before doing a root
1013 installation), there are a couple of details you need to be aware of.
1014 They have to do with the ncurses library, which uses terminfo rather
1015 than termcap for describing terminal characteristics.
1017 Though the ncurses library is terminfo-based, it will interpret your
1018 TERMCAP variable (if present), any local termcap files you reference
1019 through it, and the system termcap file. However, in order to avoid
1020 slowing down your application startup, it will only do this once per
1023 The first time you load a given terminal type from your termcap
1024 database, the library initialization code will automatically write it
1025 in terminfo format to a subdirectory under $HOME/.terminfo. After
1026 that, the initialization code will find it there and do a (much
1027 faster) terminfo fetch.
1029 Usually, all this means is that your home directory will silently grow
1030 an invisible .terminfo subdirectory which will get filled in with
1031 terminfo descriptions of terminal types as you invoke them. If anyone
1032 ever installs a global terminfo tree on your system, this will quietly
1033 stop happening and your $HOME/.terminfo will become redundant.
1035 The objective of all this logic is to make converting from BSD termcap
1036 as painless as possible without slowing down your application (termcap
1037 compilation is expensive).
1039 If you don't have a TERMCAP variable or custom personal termcap file,
1040 you can skip the rest of this dissertation.
1042 If you *do* have a TERMCAP variable and/or a custom personal termcap file
1043 that defines a terminal type, that definition will stop being visible
1044 to this application after the first time you run it, because it will
1045 instead see the terminfo entry that it wrote to $HOME/terminfo the
1048 Subsequently, editing the TERMCAP variable or personal TERMCAP file
1049 will have no effect unless you explicitly remove the terminfo entry
1050 under $HOME/terminfo. If you do that, the entry will be recompiled
1051 from your termcap resources the next time it is invoked.
1053 To avoid these complications, use infocmp(1) and tic(1) to edit the
1054 terminfo directory directly.
1056 ------------------------------- CUT HERE --------------------------------
1058 USING NCURSES WITH AFS:
1059 AFS treats each directory as a separate logical filesystem, you
1060 can't hard-link across them. The --enable-symlinks option copes
1061 with this by making tic use symbolic links.
1063 USING NCURSES WITH EMACS:
1064 GNU Emacs has its own termcap support. By default, it uses a mixture
1065 of those functions and code linked from the host system's libraries.
1066 You need to foil this and shut out the GNU termcap library entirely.
1068 In order to do this, hack the Linux config file (s/linux.h) to contain
1069 a #define TERMINFO and set the symbol LIBS_TERMCAP to "-lncurses".
1071 We have submitted such a change for the 19.30 release, so it may
1072 already be applied in your sources -- check for the #define TERMINFO.
1074 USING NCURSES WITH GPM:
1075 Ncurses 4.1 and up can be configured to use GPM (General Purpose Mouse)
1076 which is used on Linux console. Be aware that GPM is commonly
1077 installed as a shared library which contains a wrapper for the curses
1078 wgetch() function (libcurses.o). Some integrators have simplified
1079 linking applications by combining all or part of libcurses.so (the BSD
1080 curses) into the libgpm.so file, producing symbol conflicts with
1081 ncurses (specifically the wgetch function). You may be able to work
1082 around this problem by linking as follows:
1084 cc -o foo foo.o -lncurses -lgpm -lncurses
1086 but the linker may not cooperate, producing mysterious errors.
1087 A patched version of gpm is available:
1089 dickey.his.com:/ncurses/gpm-1.10-970125.tar.gz
1091 This patch is incorporated in gpm 1.12; however some integrators
1092 are slow to update this library. Current distributions of gpm can
1093 be configured properly using the --without-curses option.
1095 BUILDING NCURSES WITH A CROSS-COMPILER
1096 Ncurses can be built with a cross-compiler. Some parts must be built
1097 with the host's compiler since they are used for building programs
1098 (e.g., ncurses/make_hash and ncurses/make_keys) that generate tables
1099 that are compiled into the ncurses library. You should set the
1100 BUILD_CC environment variable to your host's compiler, and run the
1101 configure script configuring for the cross-compiler.
1103 Note that all of the generated source-files which are part of ncurses
1104 will be made if you use
1108 This would be useful in porting to an environment which has little
1109 support for the tools used to generate the sources, e.g., sed, awk and
1113 Send any feedback to the ncurses mailing list at
1114 bug-ncurses@gnu.org. To subscribe send mail to
1115 bug-ncurses-request@gnu.org with body that reads:
1116 subscribe ncurses <your-email-address-here>
1118 The Hacker's Guide in the doc directory includes some guidelines
1119 on how to report bugs in ways that will get them fixed most quickly.
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