INSTALLATION PROCEDURE:

1. First, decide whether you want ncurses to replace your existing library (in which case you'll need super-user privileges) or be installed in parallel with it.

   The --prefix option to configure changes the root directory for installing ncurses. The default is normally in subdirectories of /usr/local, except for systems where ncurses is normally installed as a system library (see "IF YOU ARE A SYSTEM INTEGRATOR"). Use --prefix=/usr to replace your default curses distribution.

   The package gets installed beneath the --prefix directory as follows:

   In $(prefix)/bin: tic, infocmp, captoinfo, tset, reset, clear, tput, toe, tabs In $(prefix)/lib: libncurses*.* libcurses.a In $(prefix)/share/terminfo: compiled terminal descriptions In $(prefix)/include: C header files Under $(prefix)/man: the manual pages

   Note that the configure script attempts to locate previous installation of ncurses, and will set the default prefix according to where it finds the ncurses headers.

   Do not use commands such as

   make install prefix=XXX

   to change the prefix after configuration, since the prefix value is used for some absolute pathnames such as TERMINFO. Instead do this

   make install DESTDIR=XXX

   See also the discussion of --with-install-prefix.

2. Type ./configure' in the top-level directory of the distribution to configure ncurses for your operating system and create the Makefiles. Besides --prefix, various configuration options are available to customize the installation; use ./configure --help' to list the available options.

   If your operating system is not supported, read the PORTABILITY section in the file ncurses/README for information on how to create a configuration file for your system.

   The `configure' script generates makefile rules for one or more object models and their associated libraries:

   libncurses.a (normal)

   libcurses.a (normal, a link to libncurses.a) This gets left out if you configure with --disable-overwrite.

   libncurses.so (shared)

   libncurses_g.a (debug)

   libncurses_p.a (profile)

   libncurses.la (libtool)

   If you configure using the --enable-widec option, a "w" is appended to the library names (e.g., libncursesw.a), and the resulting libraries support wide-characters, e.g., via a UTF-8 locale. The corresponding header files are compatible with the non-wide-character configuration; wide-character features are provided by ifdef's in the header files. The wide-character library interfaces are not binary-compatible with the non-wide-character version. Building and running the wide-character code relies on a fairly recent implementation of libiconv. We have built this configuration on various systems using libiconv, sometimes requiring libutf8.

   If you configure using the --with-pthread option, a "t" is appended to the library names (e.g., libncursest.a, libncursestw.a).

   If you do not specify any models, the normal and debug libraries will be configured. Typing `configure' with no arguments is equivalent to:

   ./configure --with-normal --with-debug --enable-overwrite

   Typing

   ./configure --with-shared

   makes the shared libraries the default, resulting in

   ./configure --with-shared --with-normal --with-debug --enable-overwrite

   If you want only shared libraries, type

   ./configure --with-shared --without-normal --without-debug

   Rules for generating shared libraries are highly dependent upon the choice of host system and compiler. We've been testing shared libraries on several systems, but more work needs to be done to make shared libraries work on other systems.

   If you have libtool installed, you can type

   ./configure --with-libtool

   to generate the appropriate static and/or shared libraries for your platform using libtool.

   You can make curses and terminfo fall back to an existing file of termcap definitions by configuring with --enable-termcap. If you do this, the library will search /etc/termcap before the terminfo database, and will also interpret the contents of the TERM environment variable. See the section BSD CONVERSION NOTES below.

3. Type `make'. Ignore any warnings, no error messages should be produced. This should compile the ncurses library, the terminfo compiler tic(1), captoinfo(1), infocmp(1), toe(1), clear(1) tset(1), reset(1), and tput(1) programs (see the manual pages for explanation of what they do), some test programs, and the panels, menus, and forms libraries.

4. Run ncurses and several other test programs in the test directory to verify that ncurses functions correctly before doing an install that may overwrite system files. Read the file test/README for details on the test programs.

   NOTE: You must have installed the terminfo database, or set the environment variable $TERMINFO to point to a SVr4-compatible terminfo database before running the test programs. Not all vendors' terminfo databases are SVr4-compatible, but most seem to be.

   It is possible to configure ncurses to use other terminfo database formats. A few are provided as examples in the include-directory (see --with-caps).

   If you run the test programs WITHOUT installing terminfo, ncurses may read the termcap file and cache that in $HOME/.terminfo, which will thereafter be used instead of the terminfo database. See the comments on "--enable-getcap-cache", to see why this is a Bad Thing.

   The ncurses program is designed specifically to test the ncurses library. You can use it to verify that the screen highlights work correctly, that cursor addressing and window scrolling works OK, etc.

5. Once you've tested, you can type make install' to install libraries, the programs, the terminfo database and the manual pages. Alternately, you can type make install' in each directory you want to install. In the top-level directory, you can do a partial install using these commands:

   'make install.progs' installs tic, infocmp, etc... 'make install.includes' installs the headers. 'make install.libs' installs the libraries (and the headers). 'make install.data' installs the terminfo data. (Note: `tic' must be installed before the terminfo data can be compiled). 'make install.man' installs the manual pages.