Debian bug report logs - #1645, boring messages


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Subject: Bug#1645: termcap
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Date: Thu, 12 Oct 95 01:14 BST
From: Ian Jackson <iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk>
To: Debian bugs submission address <debian-bugs@pixar.com>

Package: ncurses-developer
Version: 1.9.4-0

William S. Gribble writes ("Re: termcap"):
> From: Maarten Boekhold <boekhold@cindy.et.tudelft.nl>
> > I just upgraded just about every package on my system, and now, when trying
> > to start up dselect, it barfs with tons of messages about 'illegal
> > characters' in /etc/termcap.
>
> I had this same problem when doing massive upgrading of a system.  The
> problem is with ncurses, if I remember correctly.  Try purging and then
> reinstalling ncurses-developer and ncurses-runtime.
>
> Is this a bug in one of the ncurses-* packages?

Yes.  The ncurses package should not start to moan about things it
doesn't like in /etc/termcap just because it has to fall back to
/etc/termcap to find terminal information.

It should either shut up or not look in /etc/termcap at all.

Furthermore, I've found that it can take a very long time to discover
that a terminal is really unknown.  This is also unacceptable.

Ian.


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From: iwj10@thor.cam.ac.uk (Ian Jackson)
To: Ian Jackson <iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk>
Subject: Bug#1645: Acknowledgement (was: termcap)
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References: <m0t3BHc-0002ZwZ@chiark.al.cl.cam.ac.uk>

Thank you for the problem report you have sent regarding Debian GNU/Linux.
This is an automatically generated reply, to let you know your message has
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Ian Jackson
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Subject: Bug#1645: termcap
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Date: Thu, 12 Oct 95 14:12 BST
From: Ian Jackson <iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk>
To: Debian bugs submission address <debian-bugs@pixar.com>
Cc: zmbenhal@netcom.com (Zeyd M. Ben-Halim)
In-Reply-To: <199510120344.UAA27434@netcom19.netcom.com>
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Zeyd M. Ben-Halim writes in a personal email reply to my bug report:
> [Ian Jackson wrote:]
> >Yes.  The ncurses package should not start to moan about things it
> >doesn't like in /etc/termcap just because it has to fall back to
> >/etc/termcap to find terminal information.
>
> Maybe the docs are not clear but if you use the fallback feature you HAVE
> to use the canonical /etc/termcap as supplied by Eric. The standard
> /etc/termcap is full of mistakes and non-portable crap.
>
> >It should either shut up or not look in /etc/termcap at all.
>
> I'd rather it never looked at /etc/termcap but some people want the damn
> "feature". I'll try to get Eric to make it ignore any such errors but
> then the behavior may be undefined.
>
> >Furthermore, I've found that it can take a very long time to discover
> >that a terminal is really unknown.  This is also unacceptable.
>
> Further incentive to not using the option. A minimal terminfo database
> will do nicely.

Would the Debian ncurses maintainer please take note.

Ian.


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From: iwj10@thor.cam.ac.uk (Ian Jackson)
To: Ian Jackson <iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk>
Subject: Bug#1645: Info received (was Bug#1645: termcap)
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Thank you for the additional information you have supplied regarding
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please do the same thing again: send it to debian-bugs@pixar.com, ensuring
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we can identify it as relating to the same problem.

Please do not reply to the address at the top of this message,
unless you wish to report a problem with the bug-tracking system.

Ian Jackson
(maintainer, debian-bugs)


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Subject: Bug#1645: termcap
Reply-To: Bruce Perens <bruce@Pixar.com>, debian-bugs@pixar.com
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From: Bruce Perens <bruce@Pixar.com>


iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk said:
> It should either shut up or not look in /etc/termcap at all.

I will remove the termcap fall-back feature the next time I build "ncurses".
I'll also look at the control-Z problem.
I will also put in the plethora of different conXY terminal types to support
people with old kernels. I do suggest that users who upgrade in place
upgrade their kernel. The new kernel sets the terminal type to "linux".

	Thanks

	Bruce

--
-- Attention Radio Amateurs: For information on "Linux for Hams",
-- read the WWW page http://www.hams.com/LinuxForHams,
-- or e-mail the word "help" to info@hams.com



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From: iwj10@thor.cam.ac.uk (Ian Jackson)
To: Bruce Perens <bruce@Pixar.com>
Subject: Bug#1645: Info received (was Bug#1645: termcap)
In-Reply-To: <m0t3TpW-000DDHC@mongo.pixar.com>
References: <m0t3TpW-000DDHC@mongo.pixar.com>

Thank you for the additional information you have supplied regarding
this problem report.  It has been forwarded to the developers to
accompany the original report.

If you wish to continue to submit further information on your problem,
please do the same thing again: send it to debian-bugs@pixar.com, ensuring
that the Subject line starts with "Bug#1645" or "Re: Bug#1645" so that
we can identify it as relating to the same problem.

Please do not reply to the address at the top of this message,
unless you wish to report a problem with the bug-tracking system.

Ian Jackson
(maintainer, debian-bugs)


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Subject: Bug#1645: termcap
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Date: Fri, 13 Oct 95 02:11 BST
From: Ian Jackson <iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk>
To: Bruce Perens <bruce@Pixar.com>, esr@locke.ccil.org (Eric S. Raymond)
Cc: debian-bugs@Pixar.com, zmbenhal@netcom.com (Zeyd M. Ben-Halim)
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	<Pine.3.89.9510121822.B20179-0100000@locke.ccil.org>
	<m0t3BHc-0002ZwZ@chiark.al.cl.cam.ac.uk>
	<m0t3TpW-000DDHC@mongo.pixar.com>

Bruce Perens writes ("Re: Bug#1645: termcap "):
> iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk said:
> > It should either shut up or not look in /etc/termcap at all.
>
> I will remove the termcap fall-back feature the next time I build "ncurses".
> I'll also look at the control-Z problem.

Thanks.

> I will also put in the plethora of different conXY terminal types to support
> people with old kernels. I do suggest that users who upgrade in place
> upgrade their kernel. The new kernel sets the terminal type to "linux".

Right.

Eric S. Raymond writes ("Re: food for thought!"):
> > >Yes.  The ncurses package should not start to moan about things it
> > >doesn't like in /etc/termcap just because it has to fall back to
> > >/etc/termcap to find terminal information.
>
> This has been fixed in 1.9.6, ncurses now suppresses termcap syntax errors
> during termcap fallback.

That's good, IMO (though it won't affect us - see above).

> > >Furthermore, I've found that it can take a very long time to discover
> > >that a terminal is really unknown.  This is also unacceptable.
>
> You want speed?  Nuke /etc/termcap and/or use the --disable-termcap
> configuration option (both would be best, and the second alternative
> preferable if you think you can't do the first).

As you can see, our ncurses maintainer is disabling the termcap
fallback option.

> When there is only a terminfo tree, initialization is quite fast; it's
> the compilation overhead from the termcap fallback that's killing you.

Right.

> Bear in mind that, among other things, ncurses includes a drop-in
> replacement for the termcap library.  So unless you have ancient binaries
> to support, just re-link all termcap-using apps with ncurses, nuke the
> termcap file, and go.

We have some ancient binaries to support, but I believe we're
currently still using a real termcap library for that.  There are
plans to use ncurses to provide termcap support in the new ELF C
library for Linux.

> A nifty bonus in the 1.9.6 version, BTW: I made the compiler a bit
> smarter, as a result of which the terminfo tree is 26% smaller than it
> was in 1.9.4.

Ooh, good.

Thanks for your comments, but I hope you are aware that I'm not
Debian's ncurses maintainer, and so I can't make changes to (for
example) the way we build our ncurses.  Bruce Perens is our ncurses
maintainer.

Ian.


Message sent:


From: iwj10@thor.cam.ac.uk (Ian Jackson)
To: Ian Jackson <iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk>
Subject: Bug#1645: Info received (was Bug#1645: termcap)
In-Reply-To: <m0t3Yee-0002ZTZ@chiark.al.cl.cam.ac.uk>
References: <m0t3Yee-0002ZTZ@chiark.al.cl.cam.ac.uk>

Thank you for the additional information you have supplied regarding
this problem report.  It has been forwarded to the developers to
accompany the original report.

If you wish to continue to submit further information on your problem,
please do the same thing again: send it to debian-bugs@pixar.com, ensuring
that the Subject line starts with "Bug#1645" or "Re: Bug#1645" so that
we can identify it as relating to the same problem.

Please do not reply to the address at the top of this message,
unless you wish to report a problem with the bug-tracking system.

Ian Jackson
(maintainer, debian-bugs)


Message sent to debian-devel@pixar.com:


Subject: Bug#1645: termcap
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Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 23:50:01 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@locke.ccil.org>
To: Ian Jackson <iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk>
Cc: Bruce Perens <bruce@Pixar.com>, debian-bugs@Pixar.com,
        "Zeyd M. Ben-Halim" <zmbenhal@netcom.com>
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On Fri, 13 Oct 1995, Ian Jackson wrote:

> Bruce Perens writes ("Re: Bug#1645: termcap "):
> > iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk said:
> > > It should either shut up or not look in /etc/termcap at all.
> >
> > I will remove the termcap fall-back feature the next time I build "ncurses".
> > I'll also look at the control-Z problem.
>
> Thanks.

Hmmm.  Ctrl-Z problem?  Please explain.  We had a bug involving ^Z in some
older versions, but I think it's fixed now.


> > I will also put in the plethora of different conXY terminal types to support
> > people with old kernels. I do suggest that users who upgrade in place
> > upgrade their kernel. The new kernel sets the terminal type to "linux".
>
> Right.

I'm not sure I have the attributions straight here.  If you'll send me the
conXY entries, I'll put them in the terminfo master.

A hearty thank you for changing the console terminal type name to `linux'.
This is something I in my terminfo-maintainer hat have been hoping to get
all the linux distributions to do.

> We have some ancient binaries to support, but I believe we're
> currently still using a real termcap library for that.  There are
> plans to use ncurses to provide termcap support in the new ELF C
> library for Linux.

Good plan!

> > A nifty bonus in the 1.9.6 version, BTW: I made the compiler a bit
> > smarter, as a result of which the terminfo tree is 26% smaller than it
> > was in 1.9.4.
>
> Ooh, good.

Yes, this was definitely neat-hack-of-the-month if your metric is largest
winnage for smallest code change.  What happened was, I noticed that the
old write-entry code was always writing out fixed maximum-size boolean,
numeric, and string-offset tables -- in spite of the fact that there are
size members in the object header that the entry-reading code respects (it
fills everything above the retrieved size with the capability-absent
value).  So I just tweaked write-entry to only dump those tables out to
the last non-default member, and le voila!  26% shrinkage, and we're
still even binary-compatible with SVr4.  I was *very* pleased.

> Thanks for your comments, but I hope you are aware that I'm not
> Debian's ncurses maintainer, and so I can't make changes to (for
> example) the way we build our ncurses.  Bruce Perens is our ncurses
> maintainer.

OK, I wasn't clear on that.  Bruce, you guys have good karma with me (and
I expect with Zeyd, too) because you've provided quite a few high-quality
bug reports (precise, replicable, etc) that we've been able to use to
improve the package.  If there is anything we can do in the way of package
reorganizing, more or different makefile scaffolding, documentation, or
whatever, to make the Debian build process cleaner, please don't be shy
about making suggestions.

I have one question that may relate to this.  A lot of the older terminfo
entries in the latter half of the master file (after the cut mark) are
just junk from the P.O.V, of linux users (who's gonna hook up a netronics
or an exidy 2500 to a linux box at this late date?).  They take up what
might be considered a substantial amount of space on smaller systems
(the whole tree is 1293 blocks on my machine and I'm sure somewhere between
half and three-quarters of that is old entries).

I've been thinking about doing something about this but am not sure it's
worth the effort.  I'm not clear on whether the disk space savings from being
selective are worth the slight additional installation complexity.

Would it be a net win for you if we:

1. Provided a configuration option to only install the newer entries in the
   first half of the file?

2. Provided some interactive Perl thingy for culling out the terminfo tree
   after compilation?

3. Did something else clever at the cost of giving you more
   default-configuration decisions to make: (fill in the blank here)

	<a href="http://www.ccil.org/~esr/home.html">Eric S. Raymond</a>




Message sent:


From: iwj10@thor.cam.ac.uk (Ian Jackson)
To: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@locke.ccil.org>
Subject: Bug#1645: Info received (was Bug#1645: termcap)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9510122322.A751-0100000@locke.ccil.org>
References: <Pine.3.89.9510122322.A751-0100000@locke.ccil.org>

Thank you for the additional information you have supplied regarding
this problem report.  It has been forwarded to the developers to
accompany the original report.

If you wish to continue to submit further information on your problem,
please do the same thing again: send it to debian-bugs@pixar.com, ensuring
that the Subject line starts with "Bug#1645" or "Re: Bug#1645" so that
we can identify it as relating to the same problem.

Please do not reply to the address at the top of this message,
unless you wish to report a problem with the bug-tracking system.

Ian Jackson
(maintainer, debian-bugs)


Message sent to debian-devel@pixar.com:


Subject: Bug#1645: termcap
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To: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@locke.ccil.org>
Cc: Ian Jackson <iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk>, Bruce Perens <bruce@Pixar.com>,
        debian-bugs@Pixar.com, "Zeyd M. Ben-Halim" <zmbenhal@netcom.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 12 Oct 1995 23:50:01 PDT."
             <Pine.3.89.9510122322.A751-0100000@locke.ccil.org>
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 21:21:39 -0700
From: Bruce Perens <bruce@Pixar.com>

> Hmmm.  Ctrl-Z problem?  Please explain.  We had a bug involving ^Z in some
> older versions, but I think it's fixed now.

Ian's going to have to explain this one, as I haven't gotten to look at it
yet.

> I'm not sure I have the attributions straight here.  If you'll send me the
> conXY entries, I'll put them in the terminfo master.

These should be the same as "linux" except for the rows and cols...
con80x29 con80x30 con80x32 con80x34 con80x43 con80x44 con80x50 con80x60
con80x66 con132x25 con132x28 con132x29 con132x30 con132x32 con132x43
con132x44 con132x50 con132x60 con100x27 con100x37 con100x40 con100x42
con100x43 con100x60 con100x75 con160x50 con160x64

> Bruce, you guys have good karma with me (and
> I expect with Zeyd, too) because you've provided quite a few high-quality
> bug reports (precise, replicable, etc) that we've been able to use to
> improve the package.

The bug reports are all Ian Jackson's work. In truth I haven't had much
time to do anything but compile ncurses, because I'm busy with other
parts of Debian. I continue to do that so that Ian has more time to spend
on "dselect".

> If there is anything we can do in the way of package
> reorganizing, more or different makefile scaffolding, documentation, or
> whatever, to make the Debian build process cleaner, please don't be shy
> about making suggestions.

The biggest hassle so far is that we rename all manual entries from
ncurses_foo.3 to foo.3ncurses, to fit the capabilities of the man program.
Making it easier to configure the man pages (and their contents - they have
a lot of references to other man pages in the ncurses system) to fit in this
name space would be nice. I'll have comments on building ncurses ELF shared
libraries once we do the ELF switch.

Eric, are you going to the Hacker's Conference this year? I'll probably go.

	Bruce


Message sent:


From: iwj10@thor.cam.ac.uk (Ian Jackson)
To: Bruce Perens <bruce@Pixar.com>
Subject: Bug#1645: Info received (was Bug#1645: termcap)
In-Reply-To: <m0t3bcq-000B28C@mongo.pixar.com>
References: <m0t3bcq-000B28C@mongo.pixar.com>

Thank you for the additional information you have supplied regarding
this problem report.  It has been forwarded to the developers to
accompany the original report.

If you wish to continue to submit further information on your problem,
please do the same thing again: send it to debian-bugs@pixar.com, ensuring
that the Subject line starts with "Bug#1645" or "Re: Bug#1645" so that
we can identify it as relating to the same problem.

Please do not reply to the address at the top of this message,
unless you wish to report a problem with the bug-tracking system.

Ian Jackson
(maintainer, debian-bugs)


Message sent to debian-devel@pixar.com:


Subject: Bug#1645: termcap
Reply-To: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@locke.ccil.org>, debian-bugs@pixar.com
Resent-From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@locke.ccil.org>
Resent-To: debian-devel@pixar.com
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Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 01:43:01 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@locke.ccil.org>
To: Bruce Perens <bruce@Pixar.com>
Cc: Ian Jackson <iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk>, Bruce Perens <bruce@Pixar.com>,
        debian-bugs@Pixar.com, "Zeyd M. Ben-Halim" <zmbenhal@netcom.com>
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On Thu, 12 Oct 1995, Bruce Perens wrote:

> These should be the same as "linux" except for the rows and cols...
> con80x29 con80x30 con80x32 con80x34 con80x43 con80x44 con80x50 con80x60
> con80x66 con132x25 con132x28 con132x29 con132x30 con132x32 con132x43
> con132x44 con132x50 con132x60 con100x27 con100x37 con100x40 con100x42
> con100x43 con100x60 con100x75 con160x50 con160x64

Bletch, what a huge pile of nearly pointless entries.  These names look
mechanically generated. What's the history behind them?  What program(s)
or kernel(s) set them up, and why do they matter?  Are they considered
obsolete? (I'd like to put an explanation in the header comment before the
entries themselves.)

> The biggest hassle so far is that we rename all manual entries from
> ncurses_foo.3 to foo.3ncurses, to fit the capabilities of the man program.
> Making it easier to configure the man pages (and their contents - they have
> a lot of references to other man pages in the ncurses system) to fit in this
> name space would be nice. I'll have comments on building ncurses ELF shared
> libraries once we do the ELF switch.

I could add a production `debian-rename' that would do this mapping.  It
would be nice if I could refer to the man program involved in a comment
near the production, and perhaps put in a bit of information about the
nonstandard shape of its document tree.  Details?

> Eric, are you going to the Hacker's Conference this year? I'll probably go.

Can't afford it.  Wrong side of the continent and plane fare is
expensive just now. :-(

	<a href="http://www.ccil.org/~esr/home.html">Eric S. Raymond</a>




Message sent:


From: iwj10@thor.cam.ac.uk (Ian Jackson)
To: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@locke.ccil.org>
Subject: Bug#1645: Info received (was Bug#1645: termcap)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9510130134.A4021-0100000@locke.ccil.org>
References: <Pine.3.89.9510130134.A4021-0100000@locke.ccil.org>

Thank you for the additional information you have supplied regarding
this problem report.  It has been forwarded to the developers to
accompany the original report.

If you wish to continue to submit further information on your problem,
please do the same thing again: send it to debian-bugs@pixar.com, ensuring
that the Subject line starts with "Bug#1645" or "Re: Bug#1645" so that
we can identify it as relating to the same problem.

Please do not reply to the address at the top of this message,
unless you wish to report a problem with the bug-tracking system.

Ian Jackson
(maintainer, debian-bugs)


Message sent to debian-devel@pixar.com:


Subject: Bug#1645: termcap
Reply-To: Bruce Perens <bruce@Pixar.com>, debian-bugs@pixar.com
Resent-From: Bruce Perens <bruce@Pixar.com>
Resent-To: debian-devel@pixar.com
Resent-Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 06:48:01 GMT
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	id m0t3dcv-0005nTC; Thu, 12 Oct 95 23:29 PDT
Message-Id: <m0t3dcv-0005nTC@mongo.pixar.com>
To: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@locke.ccil.org>
Cc: Bruce Perens <bruce@Pixar.com>, Ian Jackson <iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk>,
        debian-bugs@Pixar.com, "Zeyd M. Ben-Halim" <zmbenhal@netcom.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 13 Oct 1995 01:43:01 PDT."
             <Pine.3.89.9510130134.A4021-0100000@locke.ccil.org>
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 23:29:52 -0700
From: Bruce Perens <bruce@Pixar.com>

>> These should be the same as "linux" except for the rows and cols...
>> con80x29 con80x30 con80x32 con80x34 con80x43 con80x44 con80x50 con80x60
>> con80x66 con132x25 con132x28 con132x29 con132x30 con132x32 con132x43
>> con132x44 con132x50 con132x60 con100x27 con100x37 con100x40 con100x42
>> con100x43 con100x60 con100x75 con160x50 con160x64
> Bletch, what a huge pile of nearly pointless entries.

Bletch indeed. The kernel sets up the VGA console at these various
resolutions, depending on the capabilities of the VGA board and user
selection. The kernel then passes these terminal types to init.
There are actually more possible ones, but these are what
termcap supports on Debian.

Linux 1.3 reports its terminal type as "linux". Linux 1.2 uses the above
crap. 1.3 is still a development kernel, and is not at all stable.

> Details? [regarding the manual stuff]
I'll Debian-ize the new release after it comes out on Friday, and let you
see the result. The man program we are using is "man_db".

	Thanks

	Bruce


Message sent:


From: iwj10@thor.cam.ac.uk (Ian Jackson)
To: Bruce Perens <bruce@Pixar.com>
Subject: Bug#1645: Info received (was Bug#1645: termcap)
In-Reply-To: <m0t3dcv-0005nTC@mongo.pixar.com>
References: <m0t3dcv-0005nTC@mongo.pixar.com>

Thank you for the additional information you have supplied regarding
this problem report.  It has been forwarded to the developers to
accompany the original report.

If you wish to continue to submit further information on your problem,
please do the same thing again: send it to debian-bugs@pixar.com, ensuring
that the Subject line starts with "Bug#1645" or "Re: Bug#1645" so that
we can identify it as relating to the same problem.

Please do not reply to the address at the top of this message,
unless you wish to report a problem with the bug-tracking system.

Ian Jackson
(maintainer, debian-bugs)


Message sent to debian-devel@pixar.com:


Subject: Bug#1645: termcap
Reply-To: Ian Jackson <iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk>, debian-bugs@pixar.com
Resent-From: Ian Jackson <iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk>
Resent-To: debian-devel@pixar.com
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Date: Fri, 13 Oct 95 13:22 BST
From: Ian Jackson <iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk>
To: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@locke.ccil.org>
Cc: debian-bugs@Pixar.com, "Zeyd M. Ben-Halim" <zmbenhal@netcom.com>
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References: <m0t3Yee-0002ZTZ@chiark.al.cl.cam.ac.uk>
	<Pine.3.89.9510122322.A751-0100000@locke.ccil.org>

Eric S. Raymond writes ("Re: Bug#1645: termcap "):
> Hmmm.  Ctrl-Z problem?  Please explain.  We had a bug involving ^Z in some
> older versions, but I think it's fixed now.

dselect, our package selection program, does (basically) the following:

 initscr();
 ... lots of (n)curses stuff, user makes menu selections, &c ...
 ... user selects menu option to run some program ...
 clear(); refresh(); endwin();
 ignore SIGQUIT, SIGINT, SIGHUP  (sigaction(...,{SIG_IGN},&save))
 fork/exec a subprocess
 waitpid(pid,&status,0);
 restore SIGQUIT, SIGINT, SIGHUP  (sigaction(...,&save,))
 sleep(1)
 initscr();
 ... go back into ncurses ...

If you hit ^Z while the subprocess is running (the subprocess takes
around a second) it seems to work only some of the time if at all.
Often ^Z has no effect at all; other times it works once but not the
second time you try it; sometimes it appears to get you back into
dselect somehow and leaves (presumably) a stuck subprocess around.

What I think it ought to do is background the whole assembly of
dselect and its subprocess.

(Come to think of it, I don't think I should be ignoring SIGHUP.  I'll
remove it from the list of signals-to-be-ignored.)

> I'm not sure I have the attributions straight here.  If you'll send me the
> conXY entries, I'll put them in the terminfo master.

I think that would probably be a bad idea.  They're obsolete,
Linux-specific and generally very horrible.  Bruce ?

> OK, I wasn't clear on that.  Bruce, you guys have good karma with me (and
> I expect with Zeyd, too) because you've provided quite a few high-quality
> bug reports (precise, replicable, etc) that we've been able to use to
> improve the package.  If there is anything we can do in the way of package
> reorganizing, more or different makefile scaffolding, documentation, or
> whatever, to make the Debian build process cleaner, please don't be shy
> about making suggestions.

Speaking personally as the main person using ncurses directly in a
specifically-for-Debian program, the best thing you can do for me is
to fix bugs :-).

> I have one question that may relate to this.  A lot of the older terminfo
> entries in the latter half of the master file (after the cut mark) are
> just junk from the P.O.V, of linux users (who's gonna hook up a netronics
> or an exidy 2500 to a linux box at this late date?).  They take up what
> might be considered a substantial amount of space on smaller systems
> (the whole tree is 1293 blocks on my machine and I'm sure somewhere between
> half and three-quarters of that is old entries).
>
> I've been thinking about doing something about this but am not sure it's
> worth the effort.  I'm not clear on whether the disk space savings from being
> selective are worth the slight additional installation complexity.
>
> Would it be a net win for you if we:
>
> 1. Provided a configuration option to only install the newer entries in the
>    first half of the file?
>
> 2. Provided some interactive Perl thingy for culling out the terminfo tree
>    after compilation?
>
> 3. Did something else clever at the cost of giving you more
>    default-configuration decisions to make: (fill in the blank here)

Bruce, is it worth us putting really obscure terminals into a separate
.deb package ?

I've been thinking that `ncurses-runtime' is a bad package name.  I
think `terminfo-data' would be a better one.  We could have
`terminfo-base' for the minimal terminfo on the base disks, and then
if you wanted a separate package you could have `terminfo-obscure'.

Ian.


Message sent:


From: iwj10@thor.cam.ac.uk (Ian Jackson)
To: Ian Jackson <iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk>
Subject: Bug#1645: Info received (was Bug#1645: termcap)
In-Reply-To: <m0t3j7i-0002Z8Z@chiark.al.cl.cam.ac.uk>
References: <m0t3j7i-0002Z8Z@chiark.al.cl.cam.ac.uk>

Thank you for the additional information you have supplied regarding
this problem report.  It has been forwarded to the developers to
accompany the original report.

If you wish to continue to submit further information on your problem,
please do the same thing again: send it to debian-bugs@pixar.com, ensuring
that the Subject line starts with "Bug#1645" or "Re: Bug#1645" so that
we can identify it as relating to the same problem.

Please do not reply to the address at the top of this message,
unless you wish to report a problem with the bug-tracking system.

Ian Jackson
(maintainer, debian-bugs)


Ian Jackson / iwj10@thor.cam.ac.uk, with the debian-bugs tracking mechanism
This page last modified 07:43:01 GMT Wed 01 Nov