lynx seems broken (Attn: ncurses maintainer)

Charles Wilson cygwin@cwilson.fastmail.fm
Fri Feb 27 04:25:00 GMT 2009


David Rothenberger wrote:
> 
> Rolling back libncurses8 and terminfo to the previous release solves the
> problem for me. Recompiling lynx from source with the new libncurses8
> and terminfo packages also fixes the problem.
> 

Confirmed bug.  I've pulled the release.

Upstream has silently changed the API, but only for "broken linkers" --
in other words, if you are not ELF, you are "broken".  And apparently we
don't care about API compatibility for "broken" linkers.

It's not just cur_term. There are 43 symbols that were exported by
ncurses-5.5's cygncurses-8.dll but are missing from ncurses-5.7's
cygncurses-8 (with no changes in how the two packages were ./configured).

_nc_cap_hash_table
_nc_capalias_table
_nc_capcmp
_nc_captoinfo
_nc_check_termtype
_nc_check_termtype2
_nc_comment_end
_nc_comment_start
_nc_copy_entry
_nc_curr_file_pos
_nc_curr_token
_nc_disable_period
_nc_do_xmc_glitch
_nc_entry_match
_nc_find_entry
_nc_find_type_entry
_nc_get_hash_table
_nc_get_table
_nc_get_token
_nc_info_hash_table
_nc_infoalias_table
_nc_infotocap
_nc_init_entry
_nc_key_names
_nc_merge_entry
_nc_panic_mode
_nc_parse_entry
_nc_push_token
_nc_read_entry_source
_nc_reset_input
_nc_resolve_uses
_nc_resolve_uses2
_nc_save_str
_nc_set_writedir
_nc_slk_format
_nc_start_line
_nc_syntax
_nc_tic_expand
_nc_tic_written
_nc_trans_string
_nc_wrap_entry
_nc_write_entry
cur_term

Given that lack of consistency, I also worry if some existing symbols
have had their signatures changed. Sheesh.


OK. So, no problem: I'll just release ncurses-5.7-[2,11] with a dll
version bump to -9 (and a new libncurses9 package).  But how do I get
everyone's libncurses8 package back to the original API?

I guess I can modify libncurses8's setup.hint to explicitly declare that
the 5.5-3 version is current, thus superseding the bad -5.7-1 version...

I was really trying to avoid a DLL version bump with this release, but
it looks like that is not possible, due to poor API management upstream.

This also means that I must also roll back the terminfo database layout
change. Sigh.

--
Chuck

--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/



More information about the Cygwin mailing list