On Sun, 12 Sep 1999, Gandhi woulda smacked you wrote:

> I remember seeing something about ncurses not compiling but I have
> foolishly dropped the scrolls that bore the wisdom of these trials
> and tribulations.
> 
> The short story is it's trying to link a text file as a library archive!

Evidently, the "demo" program isn't properly libtoolized.

I think I see the problem now. My system doesn't even try to build
"demo". The docs say that "demo" will be built only if C++ is
detected, but they really mean if "libg++" is detected. I bet you have
1.3*, with libg++. We can simply disable the demo, now and forever,
with a configure option. It's never installed in either case.

Please try the following patch, or just add ``--without-cxx'' to the
end of "CONFIGURE_ARGS..." by hand.

Index: Makefile
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/pkgsrc/devel/ncurses/Makefile,v
retrieving revision 1.24
diff -c -r1.24 Makefile
*** Makefile	1999/09/04 00:57:48	1.24
--- Makefile	1999/09/13 06:47:49
***************
*** 10,16 ****
  
  GNU_CONFIGURE=		yes
  USE_LIBTOOL=		yes
! CONFIGURE_ARGS+=	--with-normal --without-debug --enable-bsdpad
  MAKE_ENV+=		NCURSES_MAJOR="${NCURSES_MAJOR}" \
  			NCURSES_MINOR="${NCURSES_MINOR}"
  
--- 10,17 ----
  
  GNU_CONFIGURE=		yes
  USE_LIBTOOL=		yes
! CONFIGURE_ARGS+=	--with-normal --enable-bsdpad \
! 			--without-debug --without-cxx
  MAKE_ENV+=		NCURSES_MAJOR="${NCURSES_MAJOR}" \
  			NCURSES_MINOR="${NCURSES_MINOR}"