Re: [bug-gtypist] gtypist fails to build with ncurses[tinfo]

[Tim Marston]

Hi Felix,

On Sat, Sep 14, 2013 at 12:54:34PM +0200, Felix Natter wrote:
> the patch seems to be simple:
> 
> [snip]
> +PKG_CHECK_MODULES([NCURSESW], [ncursesw])

I don't think that it is going to be this simple, unfortunately.

I checked with some GNU folks about the policy on using pkg-config and,
while there is no problem with using pkg-config to *augment* the build
process, we should make sure that gtypist can build without it.

I believe that using PKG_CHECK_MODULES (in the way you are suggesting)
would make GNU typist's build process dependent on pkg-config.  (There
is an interesting discussion about it here[1].)  But we should be able
to make gtypist build without using pkg-config at all...

I haven't looked in to this properly, so the following ideas might be
rubbish, but here are a couple of ideas that might work...

  * It looks like we could add another AC_CHECK_LIB line that looks for
    the cbreak function (which is in libtinfo, not libncurses, on
    Gentoo, according to this[2]) and put tinfo as a fifth parameter.
    This should cause it to look for cbreak in libncurses first, and
    then libtinfo if it can't find it.  (See autoconf docs[4].)

  * We also might be able to use AC_SEARCH_LIBS, as suggested here[3]
    and in the autoconf docs[4].  Or we could also use AC_LINK_IFELSE
    for the same purpose.

I also found a discussion[5] suggesting that you can "invoke
AC_CHECK_LIBS first, then conditionally invoke PKG_CHECK_MODULES, and
then invoke AC_CHECK_LIBS again to validate the information found by
PKG_CHECK_MODULES".  This sounds a lot more complicated and (as far as
I can see) only gives us the benefit of including pkg-config in the
build process.  But since that's not really the goal here -- it was
just a proposed solution -- I suggest we try one of the above first.

[1] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf/2009-10/msg00132.html
[2] https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=483778
[3] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf/2009-10/msg00149.html
[4] 
https://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/autoconf/manual/autoconf-2.69/html_node/Libraries.html
[5] 
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10220946/pkg-check-modules-considered-harmful

> - src/Makefile.am contains the following header:
> ## Process this file with automake to produce Makefile.in
> 
> #
> #     NOTE:  this file will probably be changed by gettextize, so don't
> #     commit changed version into CVS.
> #
> 
> => is this still applicable?

That's a very good question.  I don't know!  :o)  You could try to run
gettextize and see what happens!

Best regards,

-- 
Tim Marston
ed.am