Bug #105822 for Alien-libtermkey: Fails to install without curses.h, even if Alien::unibilium is installed

Sun Jul 12 08:39:18 2015 TEAM [...] cpan.org - Ticket created

Subject:

Fails to install without curses.h, even if Alien::unibilium is installed

Current version seems to expect curses.h, but I thought with unbilium ncurses wasn't required? Configuring Alien-libtermkey-0.16 Running Build.PL Building bundled source Created MYMETA.yml and MYMETA.json Creating new 'Build' script for 'Alien-libtermkey' version '0.16' -> OK Checking dependencies from MYMETA.json ... Checking if you have File::Basename 0 ... Yes (2.85) Checking if you have File::Path 2.07 ... Yes (2.09) Checking if you have File::Spec 0 ... Yes (3.56) Building Alien-libtermkey-0.16 Building Alien-libtermkey libtool --mode=compile --tag=CC gcc -Wall -std=c99 -o termkey.lo -c termkey.c libtool: compile: gcc -Wall -std=c99 -c termkey.c -fPIC -DPIC -o .libs/termkey.o libtool: compile: gcc -Wall -std=c99 -c termkey.c -o termkey.o >/dev/null 2>&1 libtool --mode=compile --tag=CC gcc -Wall -std=c99 -o driver-csi.lo -c driver-csi.c libtool: compile: gcc -Wall -std=c99 -c driver-csi.c -fPIC -DPIC -o .libs/driver-csi.o libtool: compile: gcc -Wall -std=c99 -c driver-csi.c -o driver-csi.o >/dev/null 2>&1 libtool --mode=compile --tag=CC gcc -Wall -std=c99 -o driver-ti.lo -c driver-ti.c libtool: compile: gcc -Wall -std=c99 -c driver-ti.c -fPIC -DPIC -o .libs/driver-ti.o driver-ti.c:10:21: fatal error: curses.h: No such file or directory # include <curses.h> ^ compilation terminated. make: *** [driver-ti.lo] Error 1 Unable to make - No such file or directory at inc/Alien/make/Module/Build.pm line 108. This is from 'cpanm Tickit' on a clean perl-5.22.0 on Ubuntu 14.04. Might be related to the way pkg-config files are only installed for the dist, i.e. 'pkg-config unibilium' doesn't find anything if it was installed via Alien::unibilium? # cpanm Alien::unibilium Alien::unibilium is up to date. (0.12) # cpanm Alien::libtermkey --> Working on Alien::libtermkey Fetching http://cpan.perlsite.co.uk/authors/id/P/PE/PEVANS/Alien-libtermkey-0.16.tar.gz ... OK Configuring Alien-libtermkey-0.16 ... OK Building and testing Alien-libtermkey-0.16 ... FAIL (and the failure in the log file is those lines reported above) cheers, Tom

Mon Jul 13 11:36:01 2015 leonerd-cpan [...] leonerd.org.uk - Correspondence added

Well, ignoring the unibilium part, it seems Build.PL isn't sufficiently able to complain early on about a lack of dependency: $ apt-get remove libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev libunibilium-dev libtermkey-dev $ perl Build.PL [runs OK] $ ./Build [complains at:] driver-ti.c:10:21: fatal error: curses.h: No such file or directory # include <curses.h> ^ compilation terminated. It should probably notice this at Build.PL time and abort. -- Paul Evans

Mon Jul 13 11:36:01 2015 The RT System itself - Status changed from 'new' to 'open'

Mon Jul 13 15:24:25 2015 leonerd-cpan [...] leonerd.org.uk - Correspondence added

On Sun Jul 12 08:39:18 2015, TEAM wrote: Show quoted text

> Current version seems to expect curses.h, but I thought with unbilium > ncurses wasn't required?

... Show quoted text

> Might be related to the way pkg-config files are only installed for > the dist, i.e. 'pkg-config unibilium' doesn't find anything if it was > installed via Alien::unibilium?

Yeeeesss... Turns out this is turning rather nontrivial. With a small amount of hackery, it's easy enough to make Alien::unibilium install a real .pc file that contains full paths within it, so it's usable by a real `pkg-config` directly. I have now down that. But, that won't get you very far on its own because the .pc file doesn't contain the RUNPATH setting, hence the extra trickery involved at https://metacpan.org/source/PEVANS/Alien-unibilium-0.12/lib/Alien/unibilium.pm#L92 A system-level `pkg-config` reading the .pc file won't see that, meaning that by the time it comes to "make test", the lack of RPATH means that trying to link libtermkey.so will never find a libunibilium.so, so the whole lot falls over. I don't know what is a good solution here. 1) We could further mangle the .pc file at build or install time to add the RPATH argument in 2) We could set LD_LIBRARY_PATH or LD_RUN_PATH for the duration of the 'make' invocations -- Paul Evans

Sat Jun 24 13:45:24 2017 TEAM [...] cpan.org - Correspondence added

For me, the current workaround on Debian-based systems is 'apt install libunibilium-dev'. However, this means that we're unlikely to see many cpantester results.