1-- $Id: INSTALL,v 1.32 1999/07/24 21:06:24 tom Exp $ 2--------------------------------------------------------------------- 3 How to install Ncurses/Terminfo on your system 4--------------------------------------------------------------------- 5 ************************************************************ 6 * READ ALL OF THIS FILE BEFORE YOU TRY TO INSTALL NCURSES. * 7 ************************************************************ 8 9You should be reading the file INSTALL in a directory called ncurses-d.d, where 10d.d is the current version number. There should be several subdirectories, 11including `c++', `form', `man', `menu', 'misc', `ncurses', `panel', `progs', 12and `test'. See the README file for a roadmap to the package. 13 14If you are a Linux or FreeBSD or NetBSD distribution integrator or packager, 15please read and act on the section titled IF YOU ARE A SYSTEM INTEGRATOR 16below. 17 18If you are converting from BSD curses and do not have root access, be sure 19to read the BSD CONVERSION NOTES section below. 20 21If you are using a version of XFree86 xterm older than 3.1.2F, see the section 22on RECENT XTERM VERSIONS below. 23 24If you are trying to build GNU Emacs using ncurses for terminal support, 25read the USING NCURSES WITH EMACS section below. 26 27If you are trying to build applications using gpm with ncurses, 28read the USING NCURSES WITH GPM section below. 29 30If you are trying to build Elvis using ncurses for terminal support, 31read the USING NCURSES WITH ELVIS section below. 32 33If you are running over the Andrew File System see the note below on 34USING NCURSES WITH AFS. 35 36If you want to build the Ada95 binding, go to the Ada95 directory and 37follow the instructions there. The Ada95 binding is not covered below. 38 39If you are using anything but (a) Linux, or (b) one of the 4.4BSD-based 40i386 Unixes, go read the Portability section in the TO-DO file before you 41do anything else. 42 43REQUIREMENTS: 44 45You will need the following in order to build and install ncurses under UNIX: 46 47 * ANSI C compiler (gcc is recommended) 48 * sh (bash will do) 49 * awk (mawk or gawk will do) 50 * sed 51 * BSD or System V style install (a script is enclosed) 52 53Ncurses has been also built in the OS/2 EMX environment. 54 55INSTALLATION PROCEDURE: 56 571. First, decide whether you want ncurses to replace your existing library (in 58 which case you'll need super-user privileges) or be installed in parallel 59 with it. 60 61 The --prefix option to configure changes the root directory for installing 62 ncurses. The default is in subdirectories of /usr/local. Use 63 --prefix=/usr to replace your default curses distribution. This is the 64 default for Linux and BSD/OS users. 65 66 The package gets installed beneath the --prefix directory as follows: 67 68 In $(prefix)/bin: tic, infocmp, captoinfo, tset, 69 reset, clear, tput, toe 70 In $(prefix)/lib: libncurses*.* libcurses.a 71 In $(prefix)/share/terminfo: compiled terminal descriptions 72 In $(prefix)/include: C header files 73 Under $(prefix)/man: the manual pages 74 75 Note however that the configure script attempts to locate previous 76 installation of ncurses, and will set the default prefix according to where 77 it finds the ncurses headers. 78 792. Type `./configure' in the top-level directory of the distribution to 80 configure ncurses for your operating system and create the Makefiles. 81 Besides --prefix, various configuration options are available to customize 82 the installation; use `./configure --help' to list the available options. 83 84 If your operating system is not supported, read the PORTABILITY section in 85 the file ncurses/README for information on how to create a configuration 86 file for your system. 87 88 The `configure' script generates makefile rules for one or more object 89 models and their associated libraries: 90 91 libncurses.a (normal) 92 93 libcurses.a (normal, a link to libncurses.a) 94 This gets left out if you configure with --disable-overwrite. 95 96 libncurses.so (shared) 97 98 libncurses_g.a (debug) 99 100 libncurses_p.a (profile) 101 102 If you do not specify any models, the normal and debug libraries will be 103 configured. Typing `configure' with no arguments is equivalent to: 104 105 ./configure --with-normal --with-debug --enable-overwrite 106 107 Typing 108 109 ./configure --with-shared 110 111 makes the shared libraries the default, resulting in 112 113 ./configure --with-shared --with-normal --with-debug --enable-overwrite 114 115 If you want only shared libraries, type 116 117 ./configure --with-shared --without-normal --without-debug 118 119 Rules for generating shared libraries are highly dependent upon the choice 120 of host system and compiler. We've been testing shared libraries on Linux 121 and SunOS with gcc, but more work needs to be done to make shared libraries 122 work on other systems. 123 124 You can make curses and terminfo fall back to an existing file of termcap 125 definitions by configuring with --enable-termcap. If you do this, the 126 library will search /etc/termcap before the terminfo database, and will 127 also interpret the contents of the TERM environment variable. See the 128 section BSD CONVERSION NOTES below. 129 1303. Type `make'. Ignore any warnings, no error messages should be produced. 131 This should compile the ncurses library, the terminfo compiler tic(1), 132 captoinfo(1), infocmp(1), toe(1), clear(1) tset(1), reset(1), and tput(1) 133 programs (see the man pages for explanation of what they do), some test 134 programs, and the panels, menus, and forms libraries. 135 1364. Run ncurses and several other test programs in the test directory to 137 verify that ncurses functions correctly before doing an install that 138 may overwrite system files. Read the file test/README for details on 139 the test programs. 140 141 NOTE: You must have installed the terminfo database, or set the 142 environment variable $TERMINFO to point to a SVr4-compatible terminfo 143 database before running the test programs. Not all vendors' terminfo 144 databases are SVr4-compatible, but most seem to be. Exceptions include 145 DEC's Digital Unix (formerly known as OSF/1). 146 147 The ncurses program is designed specifically to test the ncurses library. 148 You can use it to verify that the screen highlights work correctly, that 149 cursor addressing and window scrolling works OK, etc. 150 1515. Once you've tested, you can type `make install' to install libraries, 152 the programs, the terminfo database and the man pages. Alternately, you 153 can type `make install' in each directory you want to install. In the 154 top-level directory, you can do a partial install using these commands: 155 156 'make install.progs' installs tic, infocmp, etc... 157 'make install.includes' installs the headers. 158 'make install.libs' installs the libraries (and the headers). 159 'make install.data' installs the terminfo data. (Note: `tic' must 160 be installed before the terminfo data can be 161 compiled). 162 'make install.man' installs the man pages. 163 164 ############################################################################ 165 # CAVEAT EMPTOR: `install.data' run as root will NUKE any existing # 166 # terminfo database. If you have any custom or unusual entries SAVE them # 167 # before you install ncurses. I have a file called terminfo.custom for # 168 # this purpose. Don't forget to run tic on the file once you're done. # 169 ############################################################################ 170 171 The terminfo(5) manual page wants to be preprocessed with tbl(1) before 172 being formatted by nroff(1). Modern man(1) implementations tend to do 173 this by default, but you may want to look at your version's man page 174 to be sure. 175 176 If the system already has a curses library that you need to keep using 177 for some bizarre binary-compatibility reason, you'll need to distinguish 178 between it and ncurses. If ncurses is installed outside the standard 179 directories (/usr/include and /usr/lib) then all your users will need 180 to use the -I option to compile programs and -L to link them. 181 182 If you have BSD curses installed in your system and you accidentally 183 compile using its curses.h you'll end up with a large number of 184 undefined symbols at link time. _waddbytes is one of them. 185 186 IF YOU DO NOT HAVE ROOT: Change directory to the `progs' subdirectory 187 and run the `capconvert' script. This script will deduce various things 188 about your environment and use them to build you a private terminfo tree, 189 so you can use ncurses applications. 190 191 If more than one user at your site does this, the space for the duplicate 192 trees is wasted. Try to get your site administrators to install a system- 193 wide terminfo tree instead. 194 195 See the BSD CONVERSION NOTES section below for a few more details. 196 1976. The c++ directory has C++ classes that are built on top of ncurses and 198 panels. You need to have c++ (and its libraries) installed before you can 199 compile and run the demo. 200 201 If you do not have C++, you must use the --without-cxx option to tell 202 the configure script to not attempt to build the C++ bindings. 203 2047. If you're running an older Linux, you must either (a) tell Linux that the 205 console terminal type is `linux' or (b) make a link to or copy of the 206 linux entry in the appropriate place under your terminfo directory, named 207 `console'. All 1.3 and many 1.2 distributions (including Yggdrasil and 208 Red Hat) already have the console type set to `linux'. 209 210 The way to change the wired-in console type depends on the configuration 211 of your system. This may involve editing /etc/inittab, /etc/ttytype, 212 /etc/profile and other such files. 213 214 Warning: this is not for the fainthearted, if you mess up your console 215 getty entries you can make your system unusable! However, if you are 216 a distribution maker, this is the right thing to do (see the note for 217 integrators near the end of this file). 218 219 The easier way is to link or copy l/linux to c/console under your terminfo 220 directory. Note: this will go away next time you do `make install.data' 221 and you'll have to redo it. There is no need to have entries for all 222 possible screen sizes, ncurses will figure out the size automatically. 223 224IF YOU ARE A SYSTEM INTEGRATOR: 225 226 Beginning with 1.9.9, the ncurses distribution includes both a tset 227 utility and /usr/share/tabset directory. If you are installing ncurses, 228 it is no longer either necessary or desirable to install tset-jv. 229 230 Configuration and Installation: 231 232 Configure with --prefix=/usr to make the install productions put 233 libraries and headers in the correct locations (overwriting any 234 previous curses libraries and headers). This will put the terminfo 235 hierarchy under /usr/share/terminfo; you may want to override this with 236 --datadir=/usr/share/misc; terminfo and tabset are installed under the 237 data directory. 238 239 Please configure the ncurses library in a pure-terminfo mode; that 240 is, with the --disable-termcap option. This will make the ncurses 241 library smaller and faster. The ncurses library includes a termcap 242 emulation that queries the terminfo database, so even applications 243 that use raw termcap to query terminal characteristics will win 244 (providing you recompile and relink them!). 245 246 If you must configure with termcap fallback enabled, you may also 247 wish to use the --enable-getcap option. This option speeds up 248 termcap-based startups, at the expense of not allowing personal 249 termcap entries to reference the terminfo tree. See the code in 250 ncurses/tinfo/read_termcap.c for details. 251 252 Note that if you have $TERMCAP set, ncurses will use that value 253 to locate termcap data. In particular, running from xterm will 254 set $TERMCAP to the contents of the xterm's termcap entry. 255 If ncurses sees that, it will not examine /etc/termcap. 256 257 Keyboard Mapping: 258 259 The terminfo file assumes that Shift-Tab generates \E[Z (the ECMA-48 260 reverse-tabulation sequence) rather than ^I. Here are the loadkeys -d 261 mappings that will set this up: 262 263 keycode 15 = Tab Tab 264 alt keycode 15 = Meta_Tab 265 shift keycode 15 = F26 266 string F26 ="\033[Z" 267 268 Naming the Console Terminal 269 270 In various Linuxes (and possibly elsewhere) there has been a practice 271 of designating the system console driver type as `console'. Please 272 do not do this any more! It complicates peoples' lives, because it 273 can mean that several different terminfo entries from different 274 operating systems all logically want to be called `console'. 275 276 Please pick a name unique to your console driver and set that up 277 in the /etc/inittab table or local equivalent. Send the entry to the 278 terminfo maintainer (listed in the misc/terminfo file) to be included 279 in the terminfo file, if it's not already there. See the 280 term(7) manual page included with this distribution for more on 281 conventions for choosing type names. 282 283 Here are some recommended primary console names: 284 285 linux -- Linux console driver 286 freebsd -- FreeBSD 287 netbsd -- NetBSD 288 bsdos -- BSD/OS 289 290 If you are responsible for integrating ncurses for one of these 291 distribution, please either use the recommended name or get back 292 to us explaining why you don't want to, so we can work out nomenclature 293 that will make users' lives easier rather than harder. 294 295RECENT XTERM VERSIONS 296 The terminfo database file included with this distribution assumes you 297 are running an XFree86 xterm based on X11R6 (i.e., xterm-r6). The 298 earlier X11R5 entry (xterm-r5) is provided as well. 299 300 If you are running XFree86 version 3.2 (actually 3.1.2F and up), you 301 should consider using the xterm-xf86-v32 (or later, the most recent 302 version is always named "xterm-xfree86") entry, which adds ANSI color 303 and the VT220 capabilities which have been added in XFree86. If you 304 are running a mixed network, however, where this terminal description 305 may be used on an older xterm, you may have problems, since 306 applications that assume these capabilities will produce incorrect 307 output on the older xterm (e.g., highlighting is not cleared). 308 309CONFIGURING FALLBACK ENTRIES 310 In order to support operation of ncurses programs before the terminfo 311 tree is accessible (that is, in single-user mode or at OS installation 312 time) the ncurses library can be compiled to include an array of 313 pre-fetched fallback entries. 314 315 These entries are checked by setupterm() only when the conventional 316 fetches from the terminfo tree and the termcap fallback (if configured) 317 have been tried and failed. Thus, the presence of a fallback will not 318 shadow modifications to the on-disk entry for the same type, when that 319 entry is accessible. 320 321 By default, there are no entries on the fallback list. After you 322 have built the ncurses suite for the first time, you can change 323 the list (the process needs infocmp(1)). To do so, use the script 324 MKfallback.sh. A configure script option --with-fallbacks does this 325 (it accepts a comma-separated list of the names you wish, and does 326 not require a rebuild). 327 328 If you wanted (say) to have linux, vt100, and xterm fallbacks, you 329 would use the commands 330 331 cd ncurses; 332 MKfallback.sh linux vt100 xterm >fallback.c 333 334 Then just rebuild and reinstall the library as you would normally. 335 You can restore the default empty fallback list with 336 337 MKfallback.sh >fallback.c 338 339 The overhead for an empty fallback list is one trivial stub function. 340 Any non-empty fallback list is const-ed and therefore lives in sharable 341 text space. You can look at the comment trailing each initializer in 342 the generated ncurses/fallback.c file to see the core cost of the 343 fallbacks. A good rule of thumb for modern vt100-like entries is that 344 each one will cost about 2.5K of text space. 345 346BSD CONVERSION NOTES: 347 If you need to support really ancient BSD programs, you probably 348 want to configure with the --enable-bsdpad option. What this does 349 is enable code in tputs() that recognizes a numeric prefix on a 350 capability as a request for that much trailing padding in milliseconds. 351 There are old BSD programs that do things like tputs("50"). 352 353 (If you are distributing ncurses as a support-library component of 354 an application you probably want to put the remainder of this section 355 in the package README file.) 356 357 The following note applies only if you have configured ncurses with 358 --enable-termcap. 359 360------------------------------- CUT HERE -------------------------------- 361 362If you are installing this application privately (either because you 363have no root access or want to experiment with it before doing a root 364installation), there are a couple of details you need to be aware of. 365They have to do with the ncurses library, which uses terminfo rather 366than termcap for describing terminal characteristics. 367 368Though the ncurses library is terminfo-based, it will interpret your 369TERMCAP variable (if present), any local termcap files you reference 370through it, and the system termcap file. However, in order to avoid 371slowing down your application startup, it will only do this once per 372terminal type! 373 374The first time you load a given terminal type from your termcap 375database, the library initialization code will automatically write it 376in terminfo format to a subdirectory under $HOME/.terminfo. After 377that, the initialization code will find it there and do a (much 378faster) terminfo fetch. 379 380Usually, all this means is that your home directory will silently grow 381an invisible .terminfo subdirectory which will get filled in with 382terminfo descriptions of terminal types as you invoke them. If anyone 383ever installs a global terminfo tree on your system, this will quietly 384stop happening and your $HOME/.terminfo will become redundant. 385 386The objective of all this logic is to make converting from BSD termcap 387as painless as possible without slowing down your application (termcap 388compilation is expensive). 389 390If you don't have a TERMCAP variable or custom personal termcap file, 391you can skip the rest of this dissertation. 392 393If you *do* have a TERMCAP variable and/or a custom personal termcap file 394that defines a terminal type, that definition will stop being visible 395to this application after the first time you run it, because it will 396instead see the terminfo entry that it wrote to $HOME/terminfo the 397first time around. 398 399Subsequently, editing the TERMCAP variable or personal TERMCAP file 400will have no effect unless you explicitly remove the terminfo entry 401under $HOME/terminfo. If you do that, the entry will be recompiled 402from your termcap resources the next time it is invoked. 403 404To avoid these complications, use infocmp(1) and tic(1) to edit the 405terminfo directory directly. 406 407------------------------------- CUT HERE -------------------------------- 408 409USING NCURSES WITH AFS: 410 AFS treats each directory as a separate logical filesystem, you 411 can't hard-link across them. The --enable-symlinks option copes 412 with this by making tic use symbolic links. 413 414USING NCURSES WITH EMACS: 415 GNU Emacs has its own termcap support. By default, it uses a mixture 416 of those functions and code linked from the host system's libraries. 417 You need to foil this and shut out the GNU termcap library entirely. 418 419 In order to do this, hack the Linux config file (s/linux.h) to contain 420 a #define TERMINFO and set the symbol LIBS_TERMCAP to "-lncurses". 421 422 We have submitted such a change for the 19.30 release, so it may 423 already be applied in your sources -- check for the #define TERMINFO. 424 425USING NCURSES WITH GPM: 426 Ncurses 4.1 and up can be configured to use GPM (General Purpose Mouse) 427 which is used on Linux console. Be aware that GPM is commonly 428 installed as a shared library which contains a wrapper for the curses 429 wgetch() function (libcurses.o). Some integrators have simplified 430 linking applications by combining all of libcurses.so (the BSD curses) 431 into the libgpm.so file, producing symbol conflicts with ncurses. You 432 may be able to work around this problem by linking as follows: 433 434 cc -o foo foo.o -lncurses -lgpm -lncurses 435 436 but the linker may not cooperate, producing mysterious errors. 437 A patched version of gpm is available: 438 439 ftp.clark.net:/pub/dickey/ncurses/gpm-1.10-970125.tgz 440 441 This patch is incorporated in gpm 1.12; however some integrators 442 are slow to update this library. 443 444USING NCURSES WITH ELVIS: 445 To use ncurses as the screen-painting library for Elvis, apply the 446 following patch to the Elvis curses 447 448*** curses.c.orig Sun Jun 26 05:48:23 1994 449--- curses.c Sun Feb 11 16:50:41 1996 450*************** 451*** 986,992 **** 452 { 453 if (has_IM) 454 do_IM(); 455! do_IC(); 456 qaddch(ch); 457 if (has_EI) 458 do_EI(); 459--- 986,995 ---- 460 { 461 if (has_IM) 462 do_IM(); 463!#ifdef NCURSES_VERSION 464! else /* ncurses does insertion in a slightly nonstandard way */ 465!#endif 466! do_IC(); 467 qaddch(ch); 468 if (has_EI) 469 do_EI(); 470 471This patch is for elvis-1.8pl4 but it can even be used for elvis-1.8pl3 with 472an offset of -11 lines. 473 474BUGS: 475 Send any feedback to the ncurses mailing list at 476 bug-ncurses@gnu.org. To subscribe send mail to 477 bug-ncurses-request@gnu.org with body that reads: 478 subscribe ncurses <your-email-address-here> 479 480 The Hacker's Guide in the misc directory includes some guidelines 481 on how to report bugs in ways that will get them fixed most quickly. 482