Bug#2731: emacs with gud creates ~/.terminfo/e/emacs

[Raul Miller <rdm@tad.micro.umn.edu>]

Michael Alan Dorman writes:
 > What I would guess is happening is that emacs, in its usual
 > arrogance, is trying to create a terminfo entry for itself (I don't
 > know where the info's coming from, frankly), and tries to use tic,
 > which creates the directory structure you noted because it can't
 > write to /usr/lib/terminfo/e.

Emacs provides two terminal emulation mechanisms (one is a dumb
terminal -- this is used rather frequently, the other is a full-screen
terminal).

Since these mechanisms are not supported by the people who maintain
the relevant terminal databases, and since the exact features of these
mechanisms may change with emacs versions, it's perfectly reasonable
for emacs to provide terminal definition for processes running under
these mechanisms.

When emacs used termcap, it could provide a terminal definition simply
by providing an environmental variable.  However, termcap is no longer
adequate for linux (since it has a hardcoded limit on the complexity
of a terminal definition and the linux console description exceeds
that size).  To provide a terminal definition under terminfo, the
relevant file(s) must be created.

Since gdb is designed to run under terminal control, gud uses these
mechanisms.

Now, if someone is having problems with the gdb paging mechanism, that
is separately interesting.  [Which version of gdb?  How many lines are
displayed before giving the prompt?]  Note that this prompt is context
sensitive -- it supposedly only appears after displaying as many rows
as will fit on a screen.  [Note that the definition of a screen is
related to the terminal definition.]

--
Raul