Zirconium Linux From Scratch - Version r12.4-45-systemd

Chapter 3. Cross Compiling Temporary Tools

Ncurses-6.5-20250809

The Ncurses package contains libraries for terminal-independent handling of character screens.

Approximate build time: 0.4 SBU
Required disk space: 54 MB
SHA256 Checksum: b071468b8c79099a378ed9bea937a605509f71e720402e2541abe20ad753c555

Installation of Ncurses

First, run the following commands to build the tic program on the build host. We install it in $LFS/tools, so that it is found in the PATH when needed:

mkdir build
pushd build
  ../configure --prefix=$LFS/tools AWK=gawk
  make -C include
  make -C progs tic
  install progs/tic $LFS/tools/bin
popd

Prepare Ncurses for compilation:

./configure --prefix=/usr                \
            --host=$LFS_TGT              \
            --build=$(./config.guess)    \
            --mandir=/usr/share/man      \
            --with-manpage-format=normal \
            --with-shared                \
            --without-normal             \
            --with-cxx-shared            \
            --without-debug              \
            --without-ada                \
            --disable-stripping          \
            AWK=gawk

The meaning of the new configure options:

--with-manpage-format=normal

This prevents Ncurses from installing compressed manual pages, which may happen if the host distribution itself has compressed manual pages.

--with-shared

This makes Ncurses build and install shared C libraries.

--without-normal

This prevents Ncurses from building and installing static C libraries.

--without-debug

This prevents Ncurses from building and installing debug libraries.

--with-cxx-shared

This makes Ncurses build and install shared C++ bindings. It also prevents it building and installing static C++ bindings.

--without-ada

This ensures that Ncurses does not build support for the Ada compiler, which may be present on the host but will not be available once we enter the chroot environment.

--disable-stripping

This switch prevents the building system from using the strip program from the host. Using host tools on cross-compiled programs can cause failure.

AWK=gawk

This switch prevents the building system from using the mawk program from the host. Some versions of mawk can cause this package to fail to build.

Compile the package:

make

Install the package:

make DESTDIR=$LFS install
ln -sv libncursesw.so $LFS/usr/lib/libncurses.so
sed -e 's/^#if.*XOPEN.*$/#if 1/' \
    -i $LFS/usr/include/curses.h

The meaning of the install options:

ln -sv libncursesw.so $LFS/usr/lib/libncurses.so

The libncurses.so library is needed by a few packages we will build soon. We create this symlink to use libncursesw.so as a replacement.

sed -e 's/^#if.*XOPEN.*$/#if 1/' ...

The header file curses.h contains the definition of various Ncurses data structures. With different preprocessor macro definitions two different sets of the data structure definition may be used: the 8-bit definition is compatible with libncurses.so and the wide-character definition is compatible with libncursesw.so. Since we are using libncursesw.so as a replacement of libncurses.so, edit the header file so it will always use the wide-character data structure definition compatible with libncursesw.so.

Details on this package are located in the section called “Contents of Ncurses.”