There is no Ncurses-Ruby package installed which is needed by TPP

[Robert Young]

The tpp program meets it's dependencies:

Depends: ruby | ruby-interpreter, ruby-ncurses

But you get the following message when attempting to execute a tpp command:

  There is no Ncurses-Ruby package installed which is needed by TPP.
  You can download it on: http://ncurses-ruby.berlios.de/

From the the issue on github, https://github.com/cbbrowne/tpp/issues/9, it may be caused by incompatible versions of ruby and ncurses

[Axel Beckert (xtaran)]

I can't reproduce this issue in a minimal Debian Unstable chroot, so it might be an ubuntu-specific issue.

And https://github.com/cbbrowne/tpp/issues/9 looks unrelated for me: Completely different error message, C linking error (Github) vs ruby module location error (here).

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[John Flood (amooti)]

Synaptic installed "ruby-ncurses", but the message refers to "ncurses-ruby"! Is that an issue?

[John Flood (amooti)]

I now have tpp working on Ubuntu 18.04.

Unfortunately, the link to ncurses-ruby in the error message (http://ncurses-ruby.berlios.de/) doesn't work, but this one does:

https://github.com/sup-heliotrope/ncursesw-ruby

However, I had trouble installing it until I ran

sudo apt-get install ruby-dev zlib1g-dev liblzma-dev

as recommended here:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44239377/cant-install-rails-on-linux-failed-to-build-gem-native-extension-with-ruby-2

Then "gem install ncursesw" worked (after cloning the above github repository) and I could open the sample files for tpp.

[Axel Beckert (xtaran)]

Hi John,

John Flood wrote:
> Synaptic installed "ruby-ncurses", but the message refers to "ncurses-
> ruby"! Is that an issue?

No, if I remember correctly, "ruby-something" is the
RedHat/Fedora/CentOS way of naming ruby library packages while
Debian/Ubuntu uses "something-ruby".

  Regards, Axel
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[Axel Beckert (xtaran)]

Hi John,

John Flood wrote:
> Unfortunately, the link to ncurses-ruby in the error message (http
> ://ncurses-ruby.berlios.de/) doesn't work, but this one does:

Yes, the BerliOS code hosting is dead for quite some years now.

> https://github.com/sup-heliotrope/ncursesw-ruby

That's also what the ruby-ncurses package has set as Homepage.

> However, I had trouble installing it until I ran
>
> sudo apt-get install ruby-dev zlib1g-dev liblzma-dev
>
> as recommended here:
>
> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44239377/cant-install-rails-on-
> linux-failed-to-build-gem-native-extension-with-ruby-2
>
> Then "gem install ncursesw" worked (after cloning the above github
> repository) and I could open the sample files for tpp.

That's interesting. So since the ruby-ncurses package is built from
the same source (just maybe a different version), it's either a bug in
the version shipped with Ubuntu 18.04 or something in the way Ubuntu
builds that package. (As mentioned before: I can't reproduce this in
Debian Unstable where Ubuntu takes most of the packages, at least tpp,
from.)

And if you look at
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ruby-ncurses you probably
see the reason for it:

#1775673 ruby-ncurses is broken in ubuntu 18.04
#1787763 ruby-ncurses is broken: try ruby -e 'require "ncurses"'

Will probably merge all these bug reports.

  Regards, Axel
--
 ,''`. | Axel Beckert <email address hidden>, https://people.debian.org/~abe/
: :' : | Debian Developer, ftp.ch.debian.org Admin
`. `' | 4096R: 2517 B724 C5F6 CA99 5329 6E61 2FF9 CD59 6126 16B5
  `- | 1024D: F067 EA27 26B9 C3FC 1486 202E C09E 1D89 9593 0EDE

[Axel Beckert (xtaran)]

Axel Beckert wrote:
> No, if I remember correctly, "ruby-something" is the
> RedHat/Fedora/CentOS way of naming ruby library packages while
> Debian/Ubuntu uses "something-ruby".

Actually it's vice-versa, but you probably got the idea anyways. :-)

  Regards, Axel
--
 ,''`. | Axel Beckert <email address hidden>, https://people.debian.org/~abe/
: :' : | Debian Developer, ftp.ch.debian.org Admin
`. `' | 4096R: 2517 B724 C5F6 CA99 5329 6E61 2FF9 CD59 6126 16B5
  `- | 1024D: F067 EA27 26B9 C3FC 1486 202E C09E 1D89 9593 0EDE

[Axel Beckert (xtaran)]

Axel Beckert wrote:
> And https://github.com/cbbrowne/tpp/issues/9 looks unrelated for me:
> Completely different error message, C linking error (Github) vs ruby
> module location error (here).

Must correct myself here: It seems that tpp thinks it can't find the
ncurses bindings if it can't load them, even if they are there, but
broken.

Nevertheless, since the above case is on Arch Linux, it might have the
same cause as on Ubuntu, but this issue is distribution-specific since
it's not present in the current upstream (or development versions) and
hence needs to be fixed per distribution, e.g. by patching or, if
sufficient, by recompiling ruby-ncurses.

  Regards, Axel
--
 ,''`. | Axel Beckert <email address hidden>, https://people.debian.org/~abe/
: :' : | Debian Developer, ftp.ch.debian.org Admin
`. `' | 4096R: 2517 B724 C5F6 CA99 5329 6E61 2FF9 CD59 6126 16B5
  `- | 1024D: F067 EA27 26B9 C3FC 1486 202E C09E 1D89 9593 0EDE