Re: [gentoo-dev] Fixing the TERM mess

[Ciaran McCreesh <ciaranm@gentoo.org>]

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On Mon, 22 Aug 2005 00:00:26 +0200 Henrik Brix Andersen
<brix@gentoo.org> wrote:
| > * Install, either with the terminal (as is done by rxvt-unicode
| >   currently), or as part of ncurses, proper terminfo definitions for
| >   these terminals.
| 
| One could argue for both solutions here: it would make sense to
| install it along with the offending terminal, since this is where we
| change the value of the $TERM variable.

The problem with this is that non-X boxes will be missing the terminfo
descriptions.

| Perhaps we should just once-and-for-all submit a patch to ncurses
| which includes these new terminfo definitions? We will then patch our
| foo-terminal ebuilds to set a proper value of $TERM. Then when
| upstream (hopefully) decides to change their $TERM value to something
| sane, ncurses will already have the support, and we can remove the
| local patch along with the version bump of foo-terminal.

The problem with this is that some terminals gain new capabilities
fairly regularly. One example is rxvt-unicode, which is still putting
out regular releases.

A third possibility is to split out the terminfo db from ncurses. This
will let us do frequent updates if necessary. It may also help the
embedded people -- we could add a USE=minimal which only installs
'common' definitions and leaves out support for obscure 1950s line
printers. There may be a gaping hole in this idea. I haven't thought it
through much...

| > * Include TERM stuff in policy so that the problem doesn't crop up
| > again a few months later.
| 
| I'm not sure what you mean by "policy"?

That thing we don't have yet.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (Vim, Shell tools, Fluxbox, Cron)
Mail            : ciaranm at gentoo.org
Web             : http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm


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