Re: pkg/50214: devel/cmake USE_NCURSES considered harmful

[Thomas Klausner <wiz%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

The following reply was made to PR pkg/50214; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Thomas Klausner <wiz%NetBSD.org@localhost>
To: NetBSD bugtracking <gnats-bugs%NetBSD.org@localhost>
Cc: 
Subject: Re: pkg/50214: devel/cmake USE_NCURSES considered harmful
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 2015 11:47:41 +0200

 On Mon, Sep 07, 2015 at 02:30:00AM +0000, davshao%gmail.com@localhost wrote:
 > Installing cmake with USE_NCURSES sets in place a time bomb that will sooner or later break someone like this trying to keep pkgsrc up-to-date through source.  The reason is that probably something similar to
 > 
 > devel/gettext-tools
 > 
 > was installed earlier before the attempt to install xfce4, before pkgsrc ncurses was installed.  This version of gettext-tools will link against a perfectly usable curses / ncurses base library.  Sometime later, but maybe a long time later, it comes time to update gettext-tools.  Now pkgsrc ncurses is installed, and gettext-tools seems to like to pick up this version of pkgsrc ncurses over base curses / ncurses.  This instantly breaks a whole lot of useful parts of a gui such as xfce4-terminal, gvim, other things.  
 
 Can you explain this part a bit more?
 
 You say gettext-tools picks up pkgsrc ncurses in preference to base
 (n)curses. 'make show-buildlink3' for gettext-tools gives me:
 
 gettext
     iconv
 expat
 termcap
 
 I.e., no curses at all; and even if that's different for your
 platform, it should always be the same and not depend on the
 installation of an ncurses package.
 
 Also, how does that change "instantly break a whole lot of useful
 parts of a gui"?
 
  Thomas