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

[Nezmer]

On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 02:55:54PM -0430, Andres Perera wrote:
> 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.

Let me ask a simple question:
Is there a real-life example where this patch would be beneficial to me
as user?

Is there someone who would like to run the next version of pacman on
a 10 or 15 year old term definition?

cons25 is probably the worst $TERM that is actually used nowadays and
It can handle colour escapes.

I remember an Arch developer missing makepkg colours in his chroots with
the latest pacman release. Failing back to colour escapes fixed that
too.

Is there a $TERM that can't handle colour escapes and It is actually
used?