[tlbuild] Xindy requires libcurses.o.5

[Dominik Wujastyk]

I did that (installed libncurses5) and indeed xindy now runs without
complaint.

Many thanks,
Dominik


On Fri, 10 Jul 2020 at 15:21, Johannes Hielscher <jhielscher at posteo.de>
wrote:

> @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
>
>
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