Ncurses package does not contain libtinfo

Bug #259139 reported by sam tygier
10
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
ncurses (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: libncurses5

I am trying to install a third party package (SDDS toolkit) which requires a library called libtinfo. a search on the ubuntu forums finds a few other people who want this library.

it seems that this library comes in the ncurses package on fedora ( https://www.linuxfoundation.org/dbadmin/browse/lib_single.php?cmd=list-by-name&Lname=libtinfo ) but ubuntus ncurses package does not contain it.

It would be handy if libtinfo could be compiled into the ubuntu package.

Revision history for this message
Thomas Dickey (dickey-his) wrote :

The entrypoints for libinfo are part of ncurses (whether the ncurses library is installed as the
two files is a decision made by the packager, and does not affect the ability of applications
to use those entrypoints). Any build script which looks explicitly for libtinfo
without first trying in the ncurses library should be fixed.

Revision history for this message
Eric Holmberg (eric-omnicurious) wrote :

The libtinfo.so functionality is built into the libncurses.so shared library. For software that expects the libtinfo.so object, do the following:

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libncurses.so.5 /usr/lib/libtinfo.so.5
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libtinfo.so.5 /usr/lib/libtinfo.so

Revision history for this message
Danilo Marques (pcdanpos) wrote :

@Eric Holmberg

Thanks, your hint did a trick !

Danilo (aka 'danpos')

Revision history for this message
Adam Gundy (adam-starsilk) wrote :

actually libncurses.so.5 is in /lib, not /usr/lib, so you need this:

sudo apt-get install libncurses5
sudo ln -s /lib/libncurses.so.5 /usr/lib/libtinfo.so.5
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libtinfo.so.5 /usr/lib/libtinfo.so

Revision history for this message
Finlay Thompson (finlay-nz) wrote :

Thanks for the tip, the symlinks let me install ghc 6.12

Revision history for this message
Alice Kærast (kaerast) wrote :

Would it be an idea to include the libtinfo.so.5 symlink in libncurses5? Is there any reason it would cause any problems?

Revision history for this message
Thomas Dickey (dickey-his) wrote : Re: [Bug 259139] Re: Ncurses package does not contain libtinfo

On Thu, 24 Dec 2009, Alice Kærast wrote:

> Would it be an idea to include the libtinfo.so.5 symlink in libncurses5?
> Is there any reason it would cause any problems?

ncurses' configure script generates that link - but only if it's
configured to generate the separate library. As I understand it,
there's two things that might be helped by adding it to point to
the single ncurses+tinfo library:

  a) if there happened to be some _binary_-compatible application
     in a package from another system, where that library was used.
  b) to appease configure-scripts or makefiles that look for that
     library.

I don't recall any examples of (a) being presented, and have seen some
cases of (b). For (b), the usual advice is to fix the configure-script
or makefile, rather than encourage non-portable code.

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

Revision history for this message
Steve Langasek (vorlon) wrote :

As Thomas notes, this should be fixed in the build scripts of whatever software is looking for a separate libtinfo, rather than by changing ncurses. Closing the report, thanks!

Changed in ncurses (Ubuntu):
status: New → Invalid
Revision history for this message
Stuart Longland (redhatter) wrote :

Hate to bump an old bug... but it seems silly to create another one for essentially the same issue.

I am currently packaging a proprietary application as an Ubuntu package (the MacroView SCADA system, as it so happens). Host platform is Ubuntu 10.04 LTS i386.

In previous releases, the upstream software package linked against libncurses.so.5. Now it links against libtinfo.so.5, and thus I now have an issue getting dpkg-buildpackage to co-operate.

I tried making a dummy package to install the necessary symlink... this might fool a runtime application, but it does not fool dpkg-shlibdeps, which complains loudly:

dpkg-shlibdeps: warning: /lib/libtinfo.so.5 has an unexpected SONAME (libncurses.so.5)
dpkg-shlibdeps: error: no dependency information found for /lib/libtinfo.so.5 (used by debian/macroview/usr/lib/macro/imgstat64).

Now, all very well to argue that the build scripts should take care of this; however in my situation, the "build" scripts are taking a tarball containing precompiled binaries and copying them into the appropriate directories for packaging -- I do not control the linking process. So the "solution" in comment #8 will not work for this use case.

Is it possible that this issue could be addressed?

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