From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 22045 invoked by alias); 28 Apr 2004 12:29:38 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gdb-patches-help@sources.redhat.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: gdb-patches-owner@sources.redhat.com Received: (qmail 22035 invoked from network); 28 Apr 2004 12:29:37 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO walton.kettenis.dyndns.org) (213.93.77.109) by sources.redhat.com with SMTP; 28 Apr 2004 12:29:37 -0000 Received: from elgar.kettenis.dyndns.org (elgar.kettenis.dyndns.org [192.168.0.2]) by walton.kettenis.dyndns.org (8.12.6p3/8.12.6) with ESMTP id i3SCTYOs000570; Wed, 28 Apr 2004 14:29:34 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from kettenis@elgar.kettenis.dyndns.org) Received: from elgar.kettenis.dyndns.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by elgar.kettenis.dyndns.org (8.12.6p3/8.12.6) with ESMTP id i3SCTXgX000450; Wed, 28 Apr 2004 14:29:33 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from kettenis@elgar.kettenis.dyndns.org) Received: (from kettenis@localhost) by elgar.kettenis.dyndns.org (8.12.6p3/8.12.6/Submit) id i3SCTOXU000445; Wed, 28 Apr 2004 14:29:24 +0200 (CEST) Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2004 12:29:00 -0000 Message-Id: <200404281229.i3SCTOXU000445@elgar.kettenis.dyndns.org> From: Mark Kettenis To: mec.gnu@mindspring.com CC: mec.gnu@mindspring.com, gdb-patches@sources.redhat.com In-reply-to: <20040428015027.7D97E4B104@berman.michael-chastain.com> (mec.gnu@mindspring.com) Subject: Re: [patch] configure.ac, configure: curses/termcap on *-*-osf5.* References: <20040428015027.7D97E4B104@berman.michael-chastain.com> X-SW-Source: 2004-04/txt/msg00628.txt.bz2 Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 21:50:27 -0400 (EDT) From: mec.gnu@mindspring.com (Michael Elizabeth Chastain) Mark Kettenis writes: > Sorry, but this isn't right. Just because ncurses doesn't work on one > particular system, we shouldn't treat all those systems specially. > Why is ncurses not working on this particular system? You're implying that building gdb with ncurses works on *any* alphaev68-dec-osf5.1 system. I doubt that it does. What I'm saying is that I don't see why gdb wouldn't build on a *-*-osf5* system with a properly installed ncurses if it builds on the same system with the vendor's curses library. What seems to be the problem here is that on the test-drive system you're using, the ncurses library isn't properly installed. This could happen on any system, even on GNU/Linux systems. That's no justification to special case *-*-osf5* in configure. On closer inspection, libcurses lives in /usr/shlib, /usr/ccs/lib, and /usr/lib. libncurses lives in /usr/local/lib. I think that's evidence that libcurses is the official curses library for osf5.1 and libncurses is something local to the machine that I'm using (spe147.testdrive.hp.com). I also experimented with a test program that just calls one library function: vendor cc, -lcurses ... links vendor cc, -lncurses ... unresolved external gcc, -lcurses ... links gcc, -lncurses ... unresolved external This makes me wonder why configure doesn't detect ncurses as being broken. That just shows that ncurses is broken on the specific host spe147. But the location of libcurses and the location of libncurses leads me to think that libcurses is official on osf5.1 and libncurses is not. Yup. You don't typically find ncurses as the vendor curses library on commercial UNIXen (as opposed to the Open Source OS'es such as *BSD and GNU/Linux). However, GDB prefers ncurses over the vendor curses library. I think it is in the GNU spirit to prefer an Open Source implementation over a proprietary one. But perhaps more importantly, ncurses is available on many systems, and provides a uniform interface. The vendor's curses implementation may be incomplete or may have serious bugs. If we have evidence that this is not the right strategy, we might change it to prefer the vendor's curses library over ncurses. But in order to do that we need more evidence than one single system that has a broken ncurses. Could you be so kind to revert the bit of your patch that special cases *-*-osf5* when looking for a curses library? Thanks, Mark