Karmic libncurses5.7 problems

[Michael Selig]

Binary package hint: libncurses5

Just upgraded to Karmic, and some legacy ncurses programs broke, using libncurses5 ver 5.7+20090303-2ubuntu2.
Replacing /lib/libncurses.5.7.so with the version from Jaunty fixes the problems.

There seem to be 2 separate problems:

1) Function key "soft labels" don't appear.

2) Ncurses programs seem to use a ridiculous amount of memory depending on locale, when "setlocale(3)" has been called.

I wrote the following C program to demonstrate the problems:

#include <ncurses.h>
#include <locale.h>

int
main()
{
        char label[3];
        int i;

        setlocale(LC_ALL, "");

        slk_init(1);
        initscr();
        cbreak();
        noecho();

        label[0] = 'F';
        label[2] = '\0';
        for (i = 1; i <= 8; i++) {
                label[1] = i + '0';
                slk_set(i, label, 1);
        }
        slk_noutrefresh();
        mvaddstr(0, 0, "The keys should be labelled F1 - F8");
        mvaddstr(2, 0, "Hit any key to continue: ");
        refresh();
        (void) getch();
        endwin();
}

Firstly this program is supposed to display 8 "soft labels" at the bottom of the XTerm (or gnome terminal), but it doesn't. (I have TERM=xterm).

If you unset the LANG environment variable, this program runs with a reasonable amount of memory, but if it is set to say en_AU.UTF-8, the process takes over 300MB!!

Thank you,
Michael Selig

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
CheckboxSubmission: da87e7fe49c084ad79757aef0e691a47
CheckboxSystem: daed2f3d6643b4a84b4520a2427f8c2b
Date: Fri Oct 30 17:42:18 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
Package: libncurses5 5.7+20090803-2ubuntu2
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_AU.UTF-8
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_AU.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-14.48-generic
SourcePackage: ncurses
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-14-generic i686

[Thomas Dickey (dickey-his)]

On Fri, 30 Oct 2009, Michael Selig wrote:

> Public bug reported:
>
> Binary package hint: libncurses5
>
> Just upgraded to Karmic, and some legacy ncurses programs broke, using libncurses5 ver 5.7+20090303-2ubuntu2.
> Replacing /lib/libncurses.5.7.so with the version from Jaunty fixes the problems.
>
> There seem to be 2 separate problems:
>
> 1) Function key "soft labels" don't appear.

That sounds like a regression which I fixed in

20090815
         + correct use of terminfo capabilities for initializing soft-keys,
           broken in 20090509 merging.

(iirc, Ubuntu bumped up to 20090803)

--
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net

[Thomas Dickey (dickey-his)]

On Fri, 30 Oct 2009, Thomas Dickey wrote:

> On Fri, 30 Oct 2009, Michael Selig wrote:
>
>> Public bug reported:
>>
>> Binary package hint: libncurses5
>>
>> Just upgraded to Karmic, and some legacy ncurses programs broke, using libncurses5 ver 5.7+20090303-2ubuntu2.
>> Replacing /lib/libncurses.5.7.so with the version from Jaunty fixes the problems.
>>
>> There seem to be 2 separate problems:
>>
>> 1) Function key "soft labels" don't appear.
>
> That sounds like a regression which I fixed in
>
> 20090815
> + correct use of terminfo capabilities for initializing soft-keys,
> broken in 20090509 merging.
>
> (iirc, Ubuntu bumped up to 20090803)

...however, a quick check of the sample code shows it not displaying
softkeys (will investigate).

--
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net

[Thomas Dickey (dickey-his)]

On Fri, 30 Oct 2009, Thomas Dickey wrote:

> On Fri, 30 Oct 2009, Thomas Dickey wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 30 Oct 2009, Michael Selig wrote:
>>
>>> Public bug reported:
>>>
>>> Binary package hint: libncurses5
>>>
>>> Just upgraded to Karmic, and some legacy ncurses programs broke, using libncurses5 ver 5.7+20090303-2ubuntu2.
>>> Replacing /lib/libncurses.5.7.so with the version from Jaunty fixes the problems.
>>>
>>> There seem to be 2 separate problems:
>>>
>>> 1) Function key "soft labels" don't appear.
>>
>> That sounds like a regression which I fixed in
>>
>> 20090815
>> + correct use of terminfo capabilities for initializing soft-keys,
>> broken in 20090509 merging.
>>
>> (iirc, Ubuntu bumped up to 20090803)
>
> ....however, a quick check of the sample code shows it not displaying
> softkeys (will investigate).

It was working in 20090803, but re-broken in

20090927
         + completed integrating "sp-funcs" by Juergen Pfeifer in ncurses
           library (some work remains for forms library).

--
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net

[Thomas Dickey (dickey-his)]

On Fri, 30 Oct 2009, Thomas Dickey wrote:

> On Fri, 30 Oct 2009, Thomas Dickey wrote:
> It was working in 20090803, but re-broken in
>
> 20090927
> + completed integrating "sp-funcs" by Juergen Pfeifer in ncurses
> library (some work remains for forms library).

...runtime size of the sample program looks okay though (a different bug).

--
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net

[Thomas Dickey (dickey-his)]

This was fixed upstream in

20091031
        + change initialization of "hidden" flag for soft-keys from true to
          false, broken in 20090704 merging (Ubuntu #464274).

[Michael Selig (michael-selig)]

I note that the original problem I reported in October last year is still present in Lucid.
The only workaround I have is to keep a copy of libncurses5.7.so from Jaunty and replace the Karmic (and now also Lucid) versions.
Why can't the above fix get into the Ubuntu distribution?

[Joachim Geiler (joachim-geiler)]

Same problem here. Breaks some older progs. Should be fixed for a distribution with LTS state.