Re: [PATCH] gnu: rxvt-unicode: Add the terminal capability data.

[Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name>]

On Wed, Dec 09, 2015 at 09:54:15PM +0100, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> Mathieu Lirzin <mthl@gnu.org> skribis:
> 
> > ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:
> >
> >> Otherwise LGTM.  It’s great that you fixed this!  People had reported
> >> the issue on IRC, so that’ll make them happy!  :-)
> >
> > I think this is only a partial fix. to launch emacsclient I still need
> > to do this:
> >
> >   TERMINFO="$HOME/.guix-profile/share/terminfo" emacsclient --tty foo
> >
> > in terminfo(5), we can read this:
> 
> [...]
> 
> > I suppose that "system terminfo directory" is set to
> > /gnu/store/...-ncurses-6.0 and IIUC correctly this is the only place
> > automatically searched.  What about adding TERMINFO_DIRS in
> > "$HOME/.guix-profile/etc/profile"?  I think TERMINFO_DIRS is more
> > appropriate than TERMINFO because it let the possibility for non-GuixSD
> > users to have multiple directories in it.
> 
> Indeed, sounds good.
> 
> > From eedb9ca34c5bbc973765c8bd8a17b0a42c98e427 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> > From: Mathieu Lirzin <mthl@gnu.org>
> > Date: Sun, 6 Dec 2015 21:58:03 +0100
> > Subject: [PATCH] gnu: rxvt-unicode: Add the terminal capability data.
> >
> > This sets the destination when installing the necessary terminal
> > capability data, which are not provided by ncurses. See
> > https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-ncurses/2009-10/msg00031.html
> >
> > * gnu/packages/xdisorg.scm (rxvt-unicode)[native-inputs]: Add ncurses.
> > [arguments]: Set the destination of the terminfo files.
> > [native-search-path]: New field.  Make them automatically available to
> > the user.
> 
> [...]
> 
> > +    (native-search-paths
> > +     (list (search-path-specification
> > +            (variable "TERMINFO_DIRS")
> > +            (files '("share/terminfo")))))
> 
> This should be in the ncurses package itself, since it is “owned” by
> ncurses, not rxvt.
> 
> However, there’s the limitation that, currently, --search-paths
> advertises the variables of things that are explicitly in the profile.
> Ncurses is usually not in the profile; it is a dependency of something
> that is in the profile.  Thus, people wouldn’t see anything about
> TERMINFO_DIRS in practice (we have the same problem with OpenSSL,
> GStreamer, and other librairies that have associated variables.)
> 
> Long story short, I would avoid adding this ‘native-search-paths’ here,
> but I’m OK with it since that would make the thing usable, provided
> there’s a big FIXME in there.
> 
> WDYT?

Since the linked discussion is from 2009, maybe somebody should again
try to politely submit the patch upstream.

> 
> Ludo’.
>