Re: tn5250 release

On Wed, 19 Nov 2008, Scott Klement wrote:

Hmmm... since you removed the tn5250.c from the slang/Makefile.am, I
don't see how this could possibly work. You might be able to get
slangterm.o to compile, but without it linked into a program, what good
is it?

Prior to the source tree reorganization, cursesterm.c, tn5250.c and
slangterm.c were all in the same directory. The Makefile would build
either a slang or curses version of the tn5250 program, depending on the
./configure --with-slang (or not)

I removed tn5250.c from the slang/Makefile.am because that was the only way I could get "make dist" to work. Even with tn5250.c in slang/Makefile.am I couldn't get a normal build to work using --with-slang so I figured that slang support is broken anyway. So in my opinion it was a good idea to fix "make dist" by taking tn5250.c out of slang/Makefile.am. What do you think?

I'm not even sure how to fix slang support. The first compile error message is:

slangterm.c: In function 'slang_terminal_init':
slangterm.c:173: error: 'SLSMG_COLOR_BRIGHT_WHITE' undeclared (first use in this function)
slangterm.c:173: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
slangterm.c:173: error: for each function it appears in.)

grepping the source tree for "SLSMG_COLOR_BRIGHT_WHITE" shows it only appearing in slang/slangterm.c so I'm not sure what declares SLSMG_COLOR_BRIGHT_WHITE other than the SLang libraries. My SLang libraries define SLSMG_COLOR_BRIGHT_WHITE in /usr/include/slang.h like this:

#ifndef IBMPC_SYSTEM
# define SLSMG_COLOR_BLACK 0x000000
...
# define SLSMG_COLOR_BRIGHT_WHITE 0x00000F
#endif

Apparently IBMPC_SYSTEM is defined, though I haven't tracked down why. So we're left with fixing SLang support or simply moving tn5250.c out of slang/Makefile.am to fix "make dist". Since nobody uses SLang, I vote for the latter.

Since nobody uses slang (that I know of, anyway) maybe we should just
comment-out the slang options in configure.ac, and move the files in
slang/Makefile.am to EXTRA_DIST? It's a workaround, but if Slang
doesn't work, I'd prefer not to give people the option to attempt it...

In my opinion SLang support should be shelved for now. The only front ends in active use that I know of are curses and x5250. Fixing something that no one uses seems to me like wasted effort. What do you think?

James Rich

if you want to understand why that is, there are many good books on
the design of operating systems. please pass them along to redmond
when you're done reading them :)
- Paul Davis on ardour-dev