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indygreg / python-build-standalone

Produce redistributable builds of Python
BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License
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Fix "Cannot read termcap database;" #215

Closed orent closed 4 months ago

orent commented 4 months ago

./configure with defaults search path compatible with both FHS and the soon-to-be-deprecated Debian path

https://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/FHS_3.0/fhs-3.0.html#idm236087499712

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1028202

orent commented 4 months ago

RHEL, MacOS, and any other unix descentant other than Debian and its derivatives install terminfo data in /usr/share/terminfo. That is the standard location.

The /etc/terminfo is supposedly for letting administrators locally install a custom termcap entry. This is a truly ancient relic from the time you might have wanted to connect a nonstandard serial terminal to your system that was missing from the terminfo database. I haven't seen it used in 3 decades. In fact, you rarely see any terminal other than xterm these days.

The only purpose served by /etc/termcap is to convince people that setting the default terminfo search path is more complicated than it really is.