[PATCH] ncurses: Introduce configs to install ncurses progs

[Charlie Jenkins]

On Tue, Sep 01, 2026 at 03:17:48PM +0200, Jonas Gorski wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 31, 2026 at 5:19 AM Charlie Jenkins
> <thecharlesjenkins at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > ncurses ships with a variety of programs: clear, infocmp, tabs, tic,
> > toe, tput, and tset/reset. Introduce configs to build/install each of
> > these programs individually. clear and reset commands are also supplied
> > by busybox, so these two are gated on the commands not being included by
> > busybox. The ncurses version of reset and clear will read the terminfo
> > to more accurately execute these commands.
> 
> How much do these increase the build time? If not too much, maybe just
> always build them and package them as individual packages? Then this
> becomes a runtime decision and not a build-time decision to include
> them (and you can just use the image builder to include them).

They are very fast to compile. That's a good idea, I'll make them as
individual packages.

> 
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Charlie Jenkins <thecharlesjenkins at gmail.com>
> > ---
> >  package/libs/ncurses/Config.in | 69 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> >  package/libs/ncurses/Makefile  | 48 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++--
> >  2 files changed, 115 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
> >
> > diff --git a/package/libs/ncurses/Config.in b/package/libs/ncurses/Config.in
> > index a18224c30c..9a8eae5e46 100644
> > --- a/package/libs/ncurses/Config.in
> > +++ b/package/libs/ncurses/Config.in
> > @@ -9,5 +9,74 @@ config LIBNCURSES_TERMINFO
> >           Whitespace separated list of terminfo files to install
> >           beyond the default terminfo files.
> >
> > +config LIBNCURSES_PROGS
> > +       bool
> > +       help
> > +         Build ncurses with support for it's programs such as tic, clear,
> > +         reset, tabs, etc.
> > +
> > +         Busybox ships its own version of clear and reset, so those must be
> > +         disabled before trying to enable this option.
> > +
> > +config LIBNCURSES_INSTALL_CLEAR
> > +       bool "install clear"
> > +       depends on !BUSYBOX_CONFIG_CLEAR
> 
> Instead of depending on this, this should just be setup as an
> alternative with a higher priority.

Aww okay I was trying to figure out a better way to do this, I'll set up
an alternative.

- Charlie

> 
> (snip)
> 
> Regards,
> Jonas