Re: Success cross-compiling ncurses-5.3-20030719 -- but can't install

[Thomas Dickey]

On Thu, 28 Aug 2003, Dan Kegel wrote:

> Thomas Dickey wrote:
> >>>ncurses-5.3 seems to be smart about not using strstream,
> >>>but this fails when you specify a cross-compiler with --build-cc ...
> >
> > that part I'm curious about - didn't get a chance to follow up on it,
> > but don't know offhand why build-cc would interfere with the C++ compiler
> > checks.  build-cc is supposed to be used only for the couple of build-time
> > executables that generate some source files under the ncurses directory.
>
> Then I misunderstood it.  Here's what "configure --help" says:
>    --with-build-cc=XXX     if cross-compiling, the build C compiler 
> (\$BUILD_CC)
> I misread that as "the cross-compiler", believe it or not.
> Not sure what you can do about users who can't read,
> but maybe you could change the text to read
>     --with-build-cc=XXX     C compiler used to generate temporary executables 
> used during build (\$BUILD_CC)
> or something like that.

something like that (I should read the help message, but confess that
I tend to read the INSTALL file when I'm checking on this part of the
configure script).  Mostly I only look at "configure --help" to check
the spelling of some options.  So a different pair of eyes does help.

> >>Is the output of 'tic' byte-order independent?  If so, I could
> >>compile ncurses a second time, for the build system, and use the
> >>'tic' it produces to install the terminfo entries.
> >
> > It is supposed to be byte-order independent, yes.
>
> Cool!
> If I understand you right, all we have to do is arrange
> for the 'tic' used during build time to be built with $BUILD_CC.
> Would that be an acceptable change?
>
> In the meantime, I'll probably try some horrible kludge like
> using my workstation's copy of tic; it's from a slightly older
> release of ncurses, but maybe it'll work anyway.

That should work: the offsets of the different entries haven't changed for
a long time.  The only problem would be if you wanted to use the 5.0
feature for extended capabilities (the -x option).  But the compiled
terminfo entries are compatible.  The only time I've run into problems
using the installed tools was with generating fallback code - the
format of that changed once or twice.

-- 
T.E.Dickey <address@hidden>
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net