Subject: Re: packages using ncurses
To: Jeremy C. Reed <reed@reedmedia.net>
From: Thomas Klausner <wiz@netbsd.org>
List: tech-pkg
Date: 02/21/2003 09:41:31
On Thu, Feb 20, 2003 at 09:28:20AM -0800, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Feb 2003, Julio Merino wrote:
> 
> > AFAIK, ncurses/buildlink2.mk uses the system curses library to link packages.
> > It will only use ncurses if USE_NCURSES is set to yes. As I see from the bl2
> > file, it doesn't check if a system curses library is available... so maybe
> > this should be added?
> 
> That would be good.

Currently, it does the decision based on uname, and the knowledge
that Solaris's curses are too buggy for pkgsrc purposes.

There is an open PR that ncurses should add some logic for other
operating systems to its buildlink2.mk, but this hasn't been fixed yet.

A test for the existence of /usr/include/{n,}curses.h and the associated
library might be a good addition. We still might want to mark
particular operating systems as USE_NCURSES (see above).

> But it still doesn't fix my initial problem.
> 
> Many packages are built using some type of curses, but don't even use that
> ncurses/buildlink2.mk (so nothing is ever registered as DEPENDS).

These packages should just add the ncurses/buildlink2.mk, that's all that's
needed. After it is fixed, of course :)

The new second curses.mk file is unneeded, and I don't think we should
add additional requirements for bootstrapping pkgsrc, especially if, as
in this case, pkgsrc already does all the work (though buggily :).
 Thomas