Issue 701751: WINDOW in py_curses.h needs ncurses-devel (original) (raw)

When trying to build 2.2.2 (Mandrake 9.1 Linux), I got errors when trying to compile _cursesmodule.c. This is because py_curses uses WINDOW.

Ultimately, I traced this to my configuration: I had a curses.h file (from somewhere), I had ncurses 5.2 installed (part of the standard Mandrake RPM-based installation), but I didn't have libncurses-devel installed. I installed that RPM and the modules compiled (and tested) correctly.

The "configure" program didn't catch this problem. Python compiled and ran anyway, but I would expect that the requirement for an obscure "devel" package ought to be flagged, either in the README or in the configure script.

I'd submit a fix, but I don't know what the behavior is supposed to be. What I see from the output of "configure" is that configure still didn't find the "ncurses.h" file, even though the compiler caught it later.

Logs of this compile on request.

Logged In: YES user_id=11375

It's unclear that this is a bug; the configure script looks for ncurses.h, and uses curses.h if it isn't found. It may not have found ncurses.h because attempting to compile with that header file failed for some other reason, other than it not existing. In any case, it's Mandrake's problem if it includes header files that don't work.