Re: Is there going to be a post-5.9 ncurses release in the near future?

[Thomas Dickey]

On Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 02:29:19PM +0100, Fotis Georgatos wrote:
> Hi Thomas,
> 
> yes, thanks for the update!
> 
> Am I wrong to think that distros have not really caught up widely on
> following up the patch-dates?
> IMHO, patch-dates appear as more of a developer thingy, rather than release
> thingy.

partly - some packagers ignore whatever versions I mark, and add development
changes to an existing package indefinitely.  That's why I added version
options to the utilities as well as the curses_version() function to the
library...
 
> Anyway, I wonder how you test ncurses across different distros/unices etc;
> what are your preferred test modes and expected coverage?
> I'm asking this, to see to  see if we may copy good practices elsewhere...

probably not much to learn: I have a lot of virtual machines which I turn
on as needed to check portability of changes.  On a given machine, I run
scripts to compile a half-dozen or so configurations, and keep the logs
in local rcs so that I can spot obvious regressions.  The machines I select
and the tests I run are ad hoc, to focus on what I'm working on.  (I have
about 90 machines in my local DNS, but only visit a dozen or so machines in
a week).

On a different dimension, I test-compile with different compilers (clang,
icc, as well as occasional visits to a guest account on some Unix boxes).
 
> cheers,
> Fotis
> 
> 
> On 28 April 2015 at 02:03, Thomas Dickey <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 12:07:49PM +0100, Fotis Georgatos wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > In relation to C++ and ncurses, ref. (I'm not expert in this):
> > >
> > https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild-easyconfigs/pull/225#issuecomment-16603167
> > >
> > > is there going to be any release of the ncurses/5.9 or ncurses/5.A type?!
> >
> > I am working toward that goal, yes.  I have at least one more iteration
> > on the configure/build-scripts after fixing some regressions from the
> > current phase (which is to get some better testing of packaged versions
> > of ncurses).
> >
> > > I'm impartial to ncurses practices, however I am with the impression that
> > > many/most linux distros have been largely stuck to 5.9:
> > >
> > http://www.rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/search.php?query=ncurses&submit=Search+
> >
> > Actually, "stuck" is what I'm working to address with the symbol versioning
> > and so forth.  But if you notice, those "5.9" packages have a variety of
> > patch-dates...
> >
> > --
> > Thomas E. Dickey <address@hidden>
> > http://invisible-island.net
> > ftp://invisible-island.net
> >
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> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> 
> echo "sysadmin know better bash than english"|sed s/min/mins/ \
>   | sed 's/better bash/bash better/' # signal detected in a CERN forum

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

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