The usage of ncurses in pkgsrc is not always straightforward, sometimes IMHO it is used as the least path of resistance but sometimes there are good reasons (though, possibly reasons that are easily fixed...) to use ncurses but a lot of the time things will Just Work(tm) with the native curses.
Once upon a time I did go through a bunch of pkgsrc and remove ncurses and see what happened. Unfortunately (or perhaps, fortunately) $REAL_LIFE intrudes on my hack time far more than it used to.
----- Original Message -----
From:
"Dan LaBell" <dan4l-nospam%verizon.net@localhost>
To:
"Brett Lymn" <blymn%internode.on.net@localhost>
Cc:
"Cág" <ca6c%bitmessage.ch@localhost>, <netbsd-users%netbsd.org@localhost>
Sent:
Tue, 14 Aug 2018 01:32:36 -0400
Subject:
Re: Portable curses
Sounds like somewhere some one started with a strong MSM-linux bias IMO
Fact is, according to Computer Science, one can't have an O.S. w/o
some form of Package System. I know and love those few unique things
about BSD that can be done with ed and vi, esp. with a rescue slice.
BUT ANYWAY
PKGSRC is strongly -- it is in fact -- biased toward ncurses,
It's like it's the deliberate choice of Researchers to tweak the
particular
"make dot conf" or m-k dot conf syntax,(*) to make, damn, sure
either, one learns the syntax, rather than just enjoy reading it, or
like ncurses will be downloaded, and built, if not the 1st day, in
the 1st week, for sure, with, like four nines!
Seriously.
Here's an example, that will, both suck in ncurses, and prove U DONT
need ncurses,
just for color. So build vms-empire via pkgsrc, then cd to the work
directory, and then apply this attached ed-script, or just look at
the attached picture.