Re: [HACKERS] Why is libcurses added to build by configure?

Tom Lane wrote:
> 
> Karl Auer <auer@kom.id.ethz.ch> writes:
> > psql (at least in 6.3.2) uses curses and readline. I know this because
> > I tried to compile under a SuSE 5.3 distribution.
> 
> Hmm.  psql does use readline, but there's no direct dependency on
> curses.  (I verified this by building without curses; it works, here.)
> 
> Perhaps there are some implementations of readline that depend on
> curses?  The GNU libreadline I have here appears to use termcap,
> but not curses.  There might be other versions though.
> 
> I think it would be possible to extend configure to detect which
> library(s) libreadline depends on, and only include those in the link.
> But that's not something to risk at this stage...

readline needs terminfo/termcap.  On many Linux systems terminfo support
is in the [n]curses library.

Phil