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

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

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?

Ludo’.