TERM variable in default-config is ignored

[herrhotzenplotz]

When I use a default-generated config file the declared TERM environment variable is ignored. This manifests in that whenever one launches contour TERM is set to vt100.

• OS

  FreeBSD hades 14.1-RELEASE-p2 FreeBSD 14.1-RELEASE-p2 releng/14.1-n267685-73905162d0ab GENERIC amd64

• contour version

  0.5.0.7168

I built contour through my FreeBSD Port at https://github.com/herrhotzenplotz/ports-overlay/tree/master/x11/contour/.

[Yaraslaut]

What happens when you do export TERM=contour inside the shell? Also, we are trying to set TERM to contour while starting terminal, so maybe terminfo file is missing, and exort TERM=contour will tell you about it

[herrhotzenplotz]

What happens when you do export TERM=contour inside the shell?

Of course that works. It's just annoying that everytime I use an ncurses application it starts up in black/white and scrolling in less(1) is dead-slow. Then you quit said application, update your environment and start over.

Also, we are trying to set TERM to contour while starting terminal, so maybe terminfo file is missing

the terminfo is installed correctly:

nico@hades:~ $ find /usr/local/share/terminfo/
/usr/local/share/terminfo/
/usr/local/share/terminfo/c
/usr/local/share/terminfo/c/contour
/usr/local/share/terminfo/c/contour-latest
nico@hades:~ $ 

and exort TERM=contour will tell you about it

running export TERM=... will tell you nothing. It just sets the shell variable and then exports it to the environment. Unless this is something shell/OS-specific.

[Yaraslaut]

Thanks @herrhotzenplotz, will try to figure out what is happening

When you export TERM, shell checks if you can set it

➜  ~ export TERM=asdfasdf
zsh: can't find terminal definition for asdfasdf

[herrhotzenplotz]

You're assuming that I am using zsh. However I am using FreeBSD's /bin/sh (which itself is an enhanced version of ash).

[Yaraslaut]

You're assuming that I am using zsh. However I am using FreeBSD's /bin/sh (which itself is an enhanced version of ash).

oh, right, i forgot that this is only zsh implementation

[herrhotzenplotz]

Ok, after some debugging and reading I figured out that the problem is that contour has a hardcoded terminfo search path for /usr/share/terminfo. It completely ignores its installation prefix which is where the CMakeLists.txt outputs the compiled terminfo file. So, rather looking for /usr/share/terminfo (which doesn't even exist on FreeBSD) it should be looking in ${PREFIX}/share/terminfo. This will also fix the problem on other BSDs.

[Yaraslaut]

This is from man tic

       Libraries that read terminfo entries are expected to check in succession

       •   a location specified with the TERMINFO environment variable,

       •   $HOME/.terminfo,

       •   directories listed in the TERMINFO_DIRS environment variable,

       •   a compiled-in list of directories (/usr/share/terminfo), and

       •   the system terminfo database (/usr/share/terminfo).

If you have a custom path for terminfo files add it into TERMINFO_DIRS

[herrhotzenplotz]

If you have a custom path for terminfo files add it into TERMINFO_DIRS

It is not a custom path. The manual page you're looking at is generated at the build time of ncurses. Here I get the following:

       The results are normally placed in the system terminfo database
       /usr/local/share/terminfo.  The compiled terminal description can be
       placed in a different terminfo database.  There are two ways to achieve
       this:

       •   First, you may override the system default either by using the -o
           option, or by setting the variable TERMINFO in your shell
           environment to a valid database location.

       •   Secondly, if tic cannot write in /usr/local/share/terminfo or the
           location specified using your TERMINFO variable, it looks for the
           directory $HOME/.terminfo (or hashed database $HOME/.terminfo.db);
           if that location exists, the entry is placed there.

       Libraries that read terminfo entries are expected to check in
       succession

       •   a location specified with the TERMINFO environment variable,

       •   $HOME/.terminfo,

       •   directories listed in the TERMINFO_DIRS environment variable,

       •   a compiled-in list of directories
           (/usr/local/share/terminfo:/usr/local/share/site-terminfo), and

       •   the system terminfo database (/usr/local/share/terminfo).

       The Fetching Compiled Descriptions section in the terminfo(5) manual
       goes into further detail.

(this is from the man page installed from ports)

Linux systems generally dump everything in /usr. *BSD-Systems among other Unix systems split out things under different prefixes for some neat seperation. As for FreeBSD, ports and binary packages are installed in /usr/local, on NetBSD pkgsrc typically installs into /usr/pkg.

Every terminal emulator in ports (that I use and have used) installs its terminfo files under $PREFIX/share/terminfo and it works flawlessly.

Note that there is also a system-provided tic in /usr/bin/tic and it has the same paths as you noted above. However since we're building contour as a package we want the terminfo not to leak outside the prefix and it should thus be installed in /usr/local/share/terminfo and contour should, just like any other terminal emulator, look there.

[Yaraslaut]

Will it be sufficient then if we add /usr/local/share/terminfo in one of the possible locations of terminfo ?