Re: ncurses build options...
On Fri, 8 Dec 1995, Jeff Noxon wrote:
> If the ncurses guys are going to keep blowing off binary compatibility,
> then perhaps we should not mess with ncurses at all.
I suspect, especially now that we've got the package load spread around
more, that Debian will be able to keep up.
> I'm not really sure where the big 'push' to move to ncurses came from
> (on linux-gcc), and I don't see how it is any better (at this point) than
> BSD curses. At least BSD curses isn't changing anymore.
Well, it's supposed to be faster, and, of course, BSD curses is no longer
supported.
That doesn't necessarily excuse any of this mind you --- I've been on the
ncurses list for all of a day and a half and I'm already hearing about
1.9.8 which apparently has some showstopper bugs that were reported but
not fixed in time for the release.
My intention is not to necessarily slavishly track the software --- I
mean, I may do it for testing purposes and the like, but I am more than
willing to act as a filter for the distribution so it won't necessarily
have to upgrade constantly to new versions of questionable stability.
> I don't want to end up with a Debian system littered with 7 different
> ncurses libs, all incompatible. There must be a Better Way.
I suspect that the distributed packaging responsibility will make it
unlikely that it will get that bad --- one or two versions, maybe, tops.
At least with Debian it'll be easy to ferret extraneous packages out and
remove them with confidence that nothing will break (ah the wonder of
automated dependency checking).
Mike.
--
"I'm a dinosaur. Somebody's digging my bones."
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