netbsd-curses - a (mostly) drop in replacement to ncurses

Message

blopsalot · Post by **blopsalot** » Sun Dec 17, 2017 12:10 pm

I finally got sick of ncurses and went looking for replacement. I'm in the process of testing. Seems upstream python has already been patched to support it. Most other packages will pickup the separate terminfo lib with pkgconfig. Anyone else interested in this?

https://github.com/sabotage-linux/netbsd-curses

my portage dev skills are still weak so i hacked it in ugly as a ncurses upgrade.

i am using ~amd64 glibc not musl.

DISCLAIMER: I am only verifying builds so far, expect some glitches!

good from portage
____________________
bash
nano
screen
gettext
psmisc
cmake
texinfo
openrc
pinentry
parted
alsa-utils

needs patch from upstream
____________________
python (2.7.9999 and 3.5.9999 appears fixed)
dialog (dialog-1.3-20171209 appears fixed)
procps (9999 appears fixed)
cdk (cdk-5.0-20171209 appears fixed)

one line change
____________________
util-linux (fixed, tparm function in more.c)

fails (need to see what required to fix still)
____________________
lynx

Ant P. · Post by **Ant P.** » Sun Dec 17, 2017 8:31 pm

Interesting to know... how well does it handle unicode wide chars?

Post by Hu » Mon Dec 18, 2017 12:04 am

For any fixes you find that aren't yet available upstream (or even for those that are, if upstream hasn't released a version with the fix), would you mind posting here links to those fixes? That would help others who want to experiment with this, so that they do not need to rediscover fixes you already found/wrote. To keep thread noise down, you could edit such links into your opening post.

Naib · Post by **Naib** » Mon Dec 18, 2017 12:23 am

What aspects of curses fscked you off? What does this replacement do better?

blopsalot · Post by **blopsalot** » Mon Dec 18, 2017 6:13 am

Ant P. wrote:Interesting to know... how well does it handle unicode wide chars?

i am still learning as well, but it seems easier to work with then ncursesw.

For any fixes you find that aren't yet available upstream (or even for those that are, if upstream hasn't released a version with the fix), would you mind posting here links to those fixes? That would help others who want to experiment with this, so that they do not need to rediscover fixes you already found/wrote. To keep thread noise down, you could edit such links into your opening post.

util-linux change was a one liner, the build error takes u straight to right place. yeah im hoping to have a semi functional overlay up soon. yeah i will just keep editing it.

What aspects of curses fscked you off? What does this replacement do better?

the project page describes it better, but what got me looking elsewhere is a minor issue i was having had me looking at bugs.gentoo.org and then i noticed the CVEs are starting to pile up. it's easier to work with both in code readability and it uses standard pkgconfig. ncurses has always been a pain in the #@$ for distro maintainers. it's primary use may end up being just embedded, but gentoo needs it either way.

blopsalot · Post by **blopsalot** » Mon Dec 25, 2017 4:28 am

So this will remain embedded only, I made the most progress using https://github.com/troglobit/editline instead of readline, but I gave up on trying to get bash to work right with it for now.

i did find the Mr Thomas Dickey is rolling along with upstream ncurses though, I had made mistake of looking at GNU. He had already fixed my issue!

I think Gentoo should change ebuild for ncurses to versioning of cdk

https://github.com/blopsalot/blop-overl ... bs/ncurses

Changelog: http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/NEWS.html
https://invisible-mirror.net/archives/ncurses/current/

i created bug https://bugs.gentoo.org/642256