[pacman-dev] [PATCH 1/3] makepkg: fallback to legacy termcap capabilities

[Andres Perera]

On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 1:09 PM, Nezmer <git at nezmer.info> wrote:
> Sent this to Andres, forwarding...
>
> ----- Forwarded message from Nezmer <git at nezmer.info> -----
>
> Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2010 20:34:15 +0300
> From: Nezmer <git at nezmer.info>
> To: Andres Perera <andres.p at zoho.com>
> Subject: Re: [pacman-dev] [PATCH 1/3] makepkg: fallback to legacy termcap
>        capabilities
> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.20 (2009-06-14)
>
> On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 12:47:02PM -0430, Andres Perera wrote:
>> On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 12:41 PM, Nezmer <git at nezmer.info> wrote:
>> > If you're running FreeBSD. The default $TERM in ttyv<int> is cons25(1) and
>> > it can handle the colours just fine. So I don't know how the hard-coded
>> > list is relevant.
>> >
>> > (1) I heard this vintage default will change soon.
>>
>> There's really no stopping at that point; the default terminal in OpenBSD is
>> "vt220" and it can handle colors, so can Linux's "linux" terminal.
>>
>> So it's screwing some terminals up vs. replicating ncurses in Bash -- since
>> that's exactly what ncurses does, it looks at the TERM string and compares it
>> to a list. Once this "vintage" changes, I guess makepkg is supposed to be
>> updated, if the second option is any good.
>>
>> Are you proposing that it should check for all these terminals or just grant
>> these bonuses to those who link against terminfo?
>
> First of all, Don't assume I know what I'm talking about. If I say
> something stupid, please correct me.

I'm not following.

>
> Currently, makepkg with colours work just fine in FreeBSD's default
> cons25 term. The patch will assume cons25 can't handle colours and will
> disable them, right?
>
> So, from a user prospective. This does not improve the experience in
> FreeBSD.
>
> Feel free to shout at my stupidity.
>
> * PS: xterm is the new default in 9-CURRENT. Hopefully It will make it
> to STABLE soon If It didn't already.

I think you're somewhat misled by the fact that freebsd was named in the commit
message.

The reason I'm only replicating terms found in tmux's [1] and tcshrc's
[2] lists is because considering only X-based terminals narrows down the
list to a point where it's manageable.

Yes, we both know that it doesn't check for cons25. What I'm getting at
is, would you or anybody be willing to maintain a list that includes it,
in addition to vt220, linux, whatever OS xyz uses? I'm not implying
that's bad or stupid, I just personally have no interest in doing that.

If this is not a common ground then I guess you suggest that assuming is
a ok?

1: http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/usr.bin/tmux/tty.c?rev=1.91;content-type=text%2Fplain
2: http://tcshrc.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/tcshrc/tcshrc/src/tcshrc.set?revision=1.9&view=markup

If you check out both examples, the first thing that comes to mind is
that they're not querying for the purpose of using color escapes. But hc
(has_status) is present in a great deal of termcap entries, and the sole
reason it's not being checked through an ncurses function is because
modern terminal emulators don't bother advertising has_status.

This relates because setaf isn't accesible through termcap.