Hi - I'm new to the list and new to debian.
I've downloaded an emacs-21.4a tarball from and gnu.org
<http://gnu.org/> and tried to install on my laptop into
/usr/local/bin. The ./configure yields a number of "failed program"
warnings but seemed in general to terminate without incident BUT I see
the error " termcap.h: No such file or directory". Sure nuff I confirm
no termcap.h anywhere on my system. Still, I proceed with make not
knowing what else to do followed by make install.
All seems to go again without incident until I attempt to invoke
./emacs which returns with "emacs: Cannot open termcap database file".
I've read and searched and tinkered but I just can't see it. I'm a
linux newbie and admit there's probably something obvious I just don't
see.
I've read the termcap is obsolete and terminfo used in conjunction
with ncurses is the proper way to go but no matter what I do emacs
continues to complain about the older termcap database file. I've also
read that this is a fairly common problem with emacs. I went into
Makefile.in <http://makefile.in/> and did #define LIBS_TERMCAP
-lcurses and then did #define LIBS_TERMCAP -lncurses because it
appears that I'm using new curses. I tried apt-get install
termcap-compat but that didn't go well and the comment says that I
shouldn't have to do that anyway if I employ the link workaround
above. I did export TERMCAP=emacs. I even copied
/usr/share/terminfo/d/dumb as /usr/share/terminfo/e/emacs - all in
response to hints in various archives.
I do know env|grep TERM tells me I have TERM=xterm and
COLORTERM=gnome-terminal.
I also don't understand why the build results in three identical sized
emacs executables in different places under /emacs- 21.4 . What's up
with that?
Can someone P-L-E-A-S-E point me in a direction that will help me sort
out my termcap problem and get emacs up and running? I even tried to
install xemacs but got the exact same error. At least I'm learning
something.
Thanks very much in advance.
Eric