Re: Cannot open termcap database

[Stefan Monnier]

>> > I tried to compile emacs for console, and I got the error
>> > Cannot open termcap database
>> > I solved the problem by installing ncurses-dev.
>> > One can introduce a check in ./configure.ac for the existence of terminfo 
>> > data
>> > base when compiling for console and giving a suggestive error message?
>> I get bitten by this each time I compile and install Emacs on a new
>> Ubuntu GNU/Linux machine. Each time I have to surf around to
>> understand what to do about it. If it is possible for "us" to fix it
>> it would be nice.
> configure could try to detect either the termcap or terminfo headers and
> if none are present should error out.  All the systems we support
> nowadays that use ttys have either termcap or terminfo, so we don't lose
> anything.

I think the problem isn't so much the C headers, as the database.
For some reason, some distribution seem to have a tendency to install
some packages that provide the termcap header files without having the
termcap database installed, so compilation works fine, but it fails at
run-time.


        Stefan