Re: [patch] configure.in: revert osf5.1 no-noncurses special case

[Daniel Jacobowitz <drow@false.org>]

On Fri, May 07, 2004 at 11:10:48AM -0400, Michael Chastain wrote:
> Hi Mark,
> 
> Yeah, I was unhappy about reverting the patch, but in the long run,
> the problem is not really specific to osf5.1, so it's better to
> solve the real problem.
> 
> > 4. Unly use ncurses if the user passes --with-ncurses to configure.
> 
> I prefer this solution the best.  We've had similar requests for
> readline from people who want to use the system readline library
> or their own readline library rather than our bundled readline.
> And this way a clueful user has the maximum usability, while a
> no-customization user has a good chance of getting a working gdb
> and even a gdbtui.

I think this is a bad idea.  Remember, there's this huge base of
installed systems where ncurses is the default library and/or installed
in a system directory.  Why penalize them?

> The advantage of the current scheme (option #0) is that it might work
> on some systems.  I'm unhappy with #0 because I know that it doesn't
> work on my hp test drive system.  As I understand it, you are unhappy
> with #1 for the converse reason: the configury can automatically make
> a bad choice on some systems.

But the reason it doesn't work on your HP test drive system is a broken
or extremely unusual installation of ncurses, so I don't want to make
policy decisions for GDB based on it.  Personally, I don't see the
point in worrying about this.  If you've got a broken ncurses
installation - one where the linker finds -lncurses but gcc doesn't, or
vice versa, is broken in my book - it's your problem.

I believe that checking for whichever header we are going to use is the
appropriate decision.  Then, if that fails, either error out or disable
gdbtui.  This is what the thousands of other software packages using
non-system libraries do.

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz