[MPlayer-dev-eng] [PATCH] bad configure detection for termcap

[Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski]

On Sunday, 25 December 2005 at 17:46, Bernd Ernesti wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 25, 2005 at 04:26:45PM +0100, Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski wrote:
> > On Sunday, 25 December 2005 at 16:09, Bernd Ernesti wrote:
> 
> [using ncurses as the default termcap library]
> 
> > > I'm not too happy with that change.
> > > 
> > > Do we really need to depend on ncurses?
> > 
> > We don't depend on it. It's just checked for first.
> 
> Which then results in a dependency to ncurses.
> 
> > > ncurses is not in the base system for NetBSD and other systems.
> > > It maybe there for other programs which really need it, but I see no
> > > need for mplayer.
> > > The library for ncurses is over 250KB big where termcap is only 12KB.
> > 
> > Well, it's newer and not broken like termcap (which dumps core when
> > terminal description has more than 1024 bytes).
> 
> That depends on the termcap library and is not true for NetBSD since the
> last millenium.

termcap was obsolete in the last millenium[1]. Are you saying it's not
obsolete now?

> It is still the fact the it uses a much bigger library for which there
> is no real need.

Are you saying that a desktop installation of NetBSD has no ncurses
installed?

> And you should have a fixed termcap database if you use a broken termcap
> library.

I wouldn't call it "fixed" but "incomplete", because the entries which
break termcap are simply removed from the database.

I see no reason to prefer the use of a library which is deprecated in
modern Linux distributions like Debian[2] and Ubuntu[3], not to mention
other unices, like HP-UX[4] and Solaris[5]. ncurses is installed by
default on every recent unix-like system.

> > > At least make it possible to force the usage of termcap, or only
> > > change the order for linux systems.
> > 
> > It's still (and has been for a long time) possible using
> > --enable-termcap and --with-termcaplib=termcap.
> 
> Ok, but I still see no reasons to change the order which libraries are
> found.

I consider libtermcap support to be legacy. We'll keep support for it, but
we should use modern libs by default.

Regards,
R.

[1] http://lists.nas.nasa.gov/archives/ext/linux-security-audit/1999/09/msg00000.html
[2] http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-faq/ch-compat.en.html#s-termcap
[3] http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-77737.html
[4] http://docs.hp.com/en/5991-1101/ch10s08.html
[5] http://www.poplog.org/talk/2001/msg00016.html

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