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Re: Updated terminfo and termcap definitions [Was: Re: 1.7.1 release date? (termcap)]


Charles Wilson wrote:
> This is a heads-up concerning changes to terminfo/termcap defintions. As
> discussed on cygwin-developers, here's a stab at providing /etc/termcap
> via terminfo:
> 
> http://cygwin.cwilson.fastmail.fm/ITP/terminfo-5.7_20091114-10.dist
Updated versions:

cygwin-1.5
http://cygwin.cwilson.fastmail.fm/ITP/terminfo-5.7_20091114-2.dist.tar

cygwin-1.7
http://cygwin.cwilson.fastmail.fm/ITP/terminfo-5.7_20091114-11.dist.tar

The cygwin-1.5 version incorporates the backspace=\177 changes for
screen, but not the cygwin console or xterm.  The cygwin-1.7 version has
those changes for all three terminal types.  The difference is because
(a) cygwin-1.5's console handling code hasn't and won't change to use
^?, whereas cygwin-1.7's already has, and (b) I don't expect that the
cygwin/xterm maintainer will release an updated version for cygwin-1.5,
but I think that WILL happen for cygwin-1.7.  Conversely, screen itself
has changed its behavior wrt backspace to use ^?, regardless of the
underlying cygwin platform.

These two release improve upon yesterday's /etc/termcap replacement:

1) actually include all the necessary terminal dependencies, so the
complex terminal descriptions (for, e.g., rxvt or xterm) actually work.

2) add (copy) aliases and term entries for terminals that were in the
termcap-20050421-1 version of /etc/termcap, but are not represented in
terminfo.  This is *probably* overkill, but for now I want to ensure
that "if it was in the old /etc/termcap, it is in the new one".

3) add entries for hi-color variations of screen, xterm, and rxvt.

So, please download and test (it's not published on the mirrors as a
test release because...well, see below).



NOTE1: termcap is only "mostly dead"...
http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-developers/2009-11/msg00011.html
> We should consider termcap dead at this point.  I don't even have a
> /etc/termcap on my most recent Ubuntu and gentoo systems and I obviously
> haven't missed it.
> 
> Currently only tetext claims to still use termcap but I wouldn't be
> surprised to find that was not true.

Yep: 'less' still uses termcap, for one.



NOTE2: Here's my "plan" for the directory structure and setup.hint
related to termcap.  Currently, a simplified view of the directory
structure looks like:

release-2/termcap/termcap-20050421-1.tar.bz2
release-2/termcap/termcap-20050421-1-src.tar.bz2

release-2/terminfo/terminfo-5.7_20090228-10.tar.bz2
release-2/terminfo/terminfo-5.7_20090228-10-src.tar.bz2
release-2/terminfo/terminfo-extra/terminfo-extra-5.7_20090228-10.tar.bz2


Afterwards:

release-2/terminfo/terminfo-5.7_20090228-10.tar.bz2
release-2/terminfo/terminfo-5.7_20090228-10-src.tar.bz2
release-2/terminfo/terminfo-5.7_20091114-11.tar.bz2
release-2/terminfo/terminfo-5.7_20091114-11-src.tar.bz2
release-2/terminfo/terminfo-extra/terminfo-extra-5.7_20090228-10.tar.bz2
release-2/terminfo/terminfo-extra/terminfo-extra-5.7_20091114-11.tar.bz2
release-2/terminfo/termcap/termcap-5.7_20091114-11.tar.bz2
release-2/terminfo/termcap/termcap-20050421-1.tar.bz2
release-2/terminfo/termcap/termcap-20050421-1-src.tar.bz2

However, this will require a rather tricky setup.hint, and I'm not sure
it will actually work:

category: Utils
requires:
sdesc: "Old-style database for terminal handling"
ldesc: "This database provides the terminal descriptions necessary
for proper operation of obsolete programs that use termcap"
prev: 20050421-1
curr: 5.7_20091114-11
external-source: terminfo

I'm hoping that the "external-source" will be attached to the
5.7_20090228-11 version only, and that the 20050421-1 entry will "know"
that it has its own install: and source: tarball. (This is also why I
haven't tried to use the mirrors and test:).

I know that 'genini' chokes on the structure above, but I don't know
about upset.  Can anybody say, definitively, whether it will work (short
of just trying it).

And if it doesn't...how should I approach the problem? Should I just
explicitly *remove* all the old termcap* files from the mirrors? Rename
termcap-20050421-1-src.tar.bz2 as 'termINFO-20050421-1-src.tar.bz2' to
make upset happy, even tho the file has NOTHING to do with termINFO at all?

--
Chuck


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