[ On Saturday, October 25, 2003 at 11:15:58 (-0700), Jeremy C. Reed wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: bash should depend on ncurses under Linux
>
> On Sat, 25 Oct 2003, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> 
> > Pkgsrc should modify the build so that the configure step does not see,
> > and the build step does not link against, ncurses.
> 
> That would be fine if the other operating systems provided an alternative.
> Not all systems provide libtermcap. (In my other email, I think I
> mentioned some examples. And as far as I can tell, there is not an
> official download version of libtermcap available any more to base a
> package on.)

If I'm not mistaken that's totally irrelevant.  If the application is
ported properly to those other systems then it should be content to use
whatever curses library those systems provide natively.

It also should not matter what the name of the library is -- so long as
all the functions are provided in an API-compatible manner by some
library.  If I'm not mistaken the library you refer to as "libtermcap"
is often known as just "libterm" on many systems.

It also does not matter whether it's termacp or terminfo -- the APIs for
the functions used are very much the same.

I.e. don't get hung up on the name of the library.

And yes, of course, pkgsrc should apply patches to the build stuff so
that the build remains portable to all the systems pkgsrc supports.

I.e. if "ncurses" is the native curses library on a given supported
system then obviously pgksrc must still allow it to be used on that
system.

The point here is to avoid requiring an add-on library when a native one
suffices (and at the same time to make damn sure pkgsrc either controls
or knows exactly what the package ends up using on every supported
system so that it gets the final dependencies right).

-- 
						Greg A. Woods

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