[tlbuild] Xindy requires libcurses.o.5

[Johannes Hielscher]

@Dominik: Please install the "libncurses5" package on your Mint
system via apt, and report if this solves the error.


@tlbuild: I can confirm this behaviour on x86_64-linux and
aarch64-linux.

xindy itself has no reference to ncurses, but it incorporates clisp,
which references to ncurses:
clisp-2.49.92/DEPENDENCIES:
> * GNU ncurses (preferred)
>   or libtermcap (discouraged) or a curses library (legacy).

user at x86_64-linux $ ldd /tlsvn/Master/bin/x86_64-linux/xindy.run
[…]
libncurses.so.5 => not found
libtinfo.so.5 => not found
[…]

user at aarch64-linux $ ldd /tlsvn/Master/bin/aarch64-linux/xindy.run
[…]
libncurses.so.6 => not found
libtinfo.so.6 => not found
[…]

GNU ncurses version 6 was released in 2015, which means modern
distributions ditched v5 (or repackaged it as optional legacy
compatibility). But this is not long enough ago to completely forget
about ncurses5 and blindly rely on ncurses6 present (Debian: libncurses6
exists only since current Buster stable, Stretch oldstable only has
ncurses5). Difficult time where we cannot rely on the presence of any
of the library versions.

This means that the current set of TL binaries has an essentially
undocumented dependency to system libraries, that happens to be either
libncurses5 or libncurses6 depending on the day's form of the CLisp
configure script on the builder's machine.

I'm less than excited. Library versions in TeXLive binaries link
to libraries that have been pulled in by chance as dependencies of
random non-essential helper packages installed on the build systems.
(I wonder what clisp's configure would have done if I hadn't installed
vim on my build machine.)

Build/source/utils/README has to say something about this, but its
comment is scarce:
# would probably be ideal to also do a local libtermcap or ncurses,
# but doesn't seem to be a problem in practice?



By the way:


Index: Build/source/utils/xindy/README-clisp
===================================================================
--- Build/source/utils/xindy/README-clisp       (revision 55696)
+++ Build/source/utils/xindy/README-clisp       (working copy)
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 (This file public domain.)
 
 GNU clisp (gnu.org/software/clisp) is required by xindy.
-See the end of ../README (that is, Buid/source/utils/README) for
+See the end of ../README (that is, Build/source/utils/README) for
 information on building it.


Best,
Johannes


Am Fri, 10 Jul 2020 10:31:42 -0600
schrieb Dominik Wujastyk <wujastyk at gmail.com>:

> System:
> 
> NAME="Linux Mint"
> VERSION="20 (Ulyana)"
> ID=linuxmint
> ID_LIKE=ubuntu
> PRETTY_NAME="Linux Mint 20"
> VERSION_ID="20"
> ...
> VERSION_CODENAME=ulyana
> UBUNTU_CODENAME=focal
> 
> $ xindy --version
> xindy release: 2.5.1
> xindy script version: 1.18
> xindy kernel version: 3.0
> CLISP version 2.49.92 (2018-02-18) (built on bulldog [127.0.0.1])
> architecture: X86_64
> 
> In the release with TeXLive 2020, updated today 2020-07-09, xindy
> requires libcurses.o.5 . This is no longer standard in Linux Mint 20
> (or probably in Ubuntu 20), which installs libcurses6. So xindy won't
> run until you have installed libncurses5 from the repository.
> 
> 
> 
> Best,
> 
> Dominik Wujastyk