ncurses: Classic terminal output library¶
Description¶
Ncurses (new curses, pronounced “enn-curses”) started as a freely distributable “clone” of System V Release 4.0 (SVr4) curses. It has outgrown the “clone” description, and now contains many features which are not in SVr4 curses. Curses is a pun on the term “cursor optimization”. It is a library of functions that manage an application’s display on character-cell terminals (e.g., VT100).
The name “ncurses” was first used as the name of the curses library in Pavel Curtis’s pcurses, dated 1982. It was apparently developed on a BSD 4.4 system, at Cornell. Parts of pcurses are readily identifiable in ncurses, including the basics for the terminfo compiler (named compile in that package):
the Caps, used to define the terminfo capabilities
awk scripts MKcaptab.awk, MKnames.awk
the library modules used for the terminfo compiler.
Besides ncurses, parts of pcurses still survive in 2010, in recognizable form in Solaris.
Website: http://invisible-island.net/ncurses
License¶
MIT-style
Upstream Contact¶
Dependencies¶
None
Special Update/Build Instructions¶
None
Type¶
standard
Equivalent System Packages¶
conda:
$ conda install ncurses-devel
cygwin:
$ apt-cyg install ncurses-devel
Debian/Ubuntu:
$ sudo apt-get install ncurses-devel
Fedora/Redhat/CentOS:
$ sudo yum install ncurses-devel
freebsd:
$ sudo pkg install ncurses-devel
opensuse:
$ sudo zypper install ncurses-devel
slackware:
$ sudo slackpkg install ncurses-devel
void:
$ sudo xbps-install ncurses-devel
See https://repology.org/project/ncurses-devel/versions
If the system package is installed, ./configure will check whether it can be used.