'make foo-menuconfig' broken when host-ncurses was built

Kconfig uses pkg-config to find the ncurses or ncursesw library. If the ncursesw package is found with pkg-config, it will #include <ncursesw.h>. Since Buildroot's host-ncurses doesn't install a .pc file, and linux.mk anyway doesn't pass the pkg-config options to find the host pkg-config files, Kconfig will always find the system's ncursesw.h.

However, since commit dde090c299 (linux: fix passing of host CFLAGS and LDFLAGS) HOST_LDFLAGS is passed to the linux build system. Thus, if host-ncurses was already built before 'make linux-menuconfig' is called, the build will pick up libncurses from the host directory, which is NOT widechar. Thus, two different ncurses configurations are mixed into the final mconf program. This will result in serious breakage in the rendering of the menus (lots of @ and question mark characters).

As a workaround, just build host-ncurses with widechar support. That makes it compatible with ncursesw.h picked up from the host. Clearly, this is not a robust solution. But it's simple, it works, and it shouldn't hurt to build host-ncurses with widechar support (we can safely assume that the system doesn't have a non-widechare uClibc library...).

Signed-off-by Arnout Vandecappelle (Essensium/Mind) <[email protected]>

Cc David De Grave <[email protected]>

---
 package/ncurses/ncurses.mk | 1 +
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)

package/ncurses/ncurses.mk +1 -1

index 90cf4a4dc5..9942d3f0bd 100644
@@ -153,6 +153,7 @@ HOST_NCURSES_CONF_OPTS = \
        --without-cxx \
        --without-cxx-binding \
        --without-ada \
+       --enable-widec \
        --without-normal
 
 $(eval $(autotools-package))
--

2.17.0

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Kconfig uses either pkg-config or hard-coded /usr/include paths to find the ncurses or ncursesw library. If ncursesw is found, it will include <ncursesw.h>. Since Buildroot's host-ncurses doesn't install a .pc file, and linux.mk anyway doesn't pass the pkg-config options to find the host pkg-config files, Kconfig will always find the system's ncursesw.h.

However, since commit dde090c299 (linux: fix passing of host CFLAGS and LDFLAGS) HOST_LDFLAGS is passed to the linux build system. Thus, if host-ncurses was already built before 'make linux-menuconfig' is called, the build will pick up libncurses from the host directory, which is NOT widechar. Thus, two different ncurses configurations are mixed into the final mconf program. This will result in serious breakage in the rendering of the menus (lots of @ and question mark characters).

As a workaround, just build host-ncurses with widechar support. That makes it compatible with ncursesw.h picked up from the host. Clearly, this is not a robust solution. But it's simple, it works, and it shouldn't hurt to build host-ncurses with widechar support (we can safely assume that the system doesn't have a non-widechar uClibc library...).

Signed-off-by Arnout Vandecappelle (Essensium/Mind) <[email protected]>

Cc David De Grave <[email protected]>

Cc Scott Fan <[email protected]>

---
v2:
- fix typo in commit message;
- extend commit message;
- keep alphabetic ordering of configure options (Scott)

Note: I haven't tested what happens on a system which doesn't have ncursesw.h. But I guess such a system is so exotic that it's not worthwhile to do something special for it.

---
 package/ncurses/ncurses.mk | 1 +
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)

package/ncurses/ncurses.mk +1 -0

index 90cf4a4dc5..f9cd0d3fbd 100644
@@ -147,6 +147,7 @@ define HOST_NCURSES_BUILD_CMDS
 endef
 
 HOST_NCURSES_CONF_OPTS = \
+	--enable-widec \
 	--with-shared \
 	--without-gpm \
 	--without-manpages \

Signature · 6 lines

2.17.0

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What about overriding HOSTCC when calling linux-menuconfig:

    diff --git a/linux/linux.mk b/linux/linux.mk
    index 9e646baffc..75a256ff9e 100644
    --- a/linux/linux.mk
    +++ b/linux/linux.mk
    @@ -235,7 +235,7 @@ LINUX_KCONFIG_FILE = $(call qstrip,$(BR2_LINUX_KERNEL_CUSTOM_CONFIG_FILE))
     endif
     LINUX_KCONFIG_FRAGMENT_FILES = $(call qstrip,$(BR2_LINUX_KERNEL_CONFIG_FRAGMENT_FILES))
     LINUX_KCONFIG_EDITORS = menuconfig xconfig gconfig nconfig
    -LINUX_KCONFIG_OPTS = $(LINUX_MAKE_FLAGS)
    +LINUX_KCONFIG_OPTS = $(LINUX_MAKE_FLAGS) HOSTCC="$(HOSTCC)"
     
     # If no package has yet set it, set it from the Kconfig option
     LINUX_NEEDS_MODULES ?= $(BR2_LINUX_NEEDS_MODULES)

We should not need any library from HOST_DIR when we run menuconfig.

Note: we may still want to enable widechar in host-ncurses for other reasons, though. But with the proposdal above, there is no lopnger any mix of system ncurses vs our own.

Hello,

Quoted 18 lines · Yann E. MORIN

What about overriding HOSTCC when calling linux-menuconfig:

    diff --git a/linux/linux.mk b/linux/linux.mk
    index 9e646baffc..75a256ff9e 100644
    --- a/linux/linux.mk
    +++ b/linux/linux.mk
    @@ -235,7 +235,7 @@ LINUX_KCONFIG_FILE = $(call qstrip,$(BR2_LINUX_KERNEL_CUSTOM_CONFIG_FILE))
     endif
     LINUX_KCONFIG_FRAGMENT_FILES = $(call qstrip,$(BR2_LINUX_KERNEL_CONFIG_FRAGMENT_FILES))
     LINUX_KCONFIG_EDITORS = menuconfig xconfig gconfig nconfig
    -LINUX_KCONFIG_OPTS = $(LINUX_MAKE_FLAGS)
    +LINUX_KCONFIG_OPTS = $(LINUX_MAKE_FLAGS) HOSTCC="$(HOSTCC)"
     
     # If no package has yet set it, set it from the Kconfig option
     LINUX_NEEDS_MODULES ?= $(BR2_LINUX_NEEDS_MODULES)

We should not need any library from HOST_DIR when we run menuconfig.

Quoted 3 lines

Note: we may still want to enable widechar in host-ncurses for other reasons, though. But with the proposdal above, there is no lopnger any mix of system ncurses vs our own.

Arnout, any comment on Yann's proposal? I have to say my preference goes to Yann's solution, as it's the one that ensures there is no mixing of ncurses between the one we build in HOST_DIR and the one provided by the system.

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"Arnout" == Arnout Vandecappelle <[email protected]> writes:

Hi all,
My colleague David observed that since a month or so, the dialogs of 'make
linux-menuconfig' looked pretty garbled. After a bit of debugging, it turns out that the problem is mixing host-ncurses with recent (6.0+) system ncurses. Based on the output, I suspect it's mixing an 8-bit ncurses library with widechar termcap files.

This issue is caused by dde090c299 linux: fix passing of host CFLAGS and LDFLAGS

What happens is that kconfig uses pkg-config to discover the ncurses
installation. Since our host-ncurses doesn't install a pc file (and in linux.mk we anyway don't pass the approprate PKG_CONFIG_* variables), this will pick up the system's pkg-config settings. However, we set HOSTCC="/usr/bin/gcc -O2 -I.../host/include -L.../host/lib -Wl,-rpath,.../host/lib" on the linux make command line, so it *will* actually pick up our host-ncurses library. On my system, 'pkg-config --libs ncurses' returns '-lncurses -ltinfo'. Our ncurses only has libncurses.so, so libtinfo.so will be picked up from the host.

The question is how to resolve this. The correct thing to do would be to
install the .pc file, and to do what Thomas proposed a while ago:
$(HOST_DIR)/bin/pkg-config returns the host config, $(CROSS_COMPILE)pkg-config returns the target config. But this will probably result in breakage of a lot of packages...

Any better ideas?

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"Arnout" == Arnout Vandecappelle <[email protected]> writes:

Hi all,
My colleague David observed that since a month or so, the dialogs of 'make
linux-menuconfig' looked pretty garbled. After a bit of debugging, it turns out that the problem is mixing host-ncurses with recent (6.0+) system ncurses. Based on the output, I suspect it's mixing an 8-bit ncurses library with widechar termcap files.

This issue is caused by dde090c299 linux: fix passing of host CFLAGS and LDFLAGS

Quoted 8 lines

What happens is that kconfig uses pkg-config to discover the ncurses
installation. Since our host-ncurses doesn't install a pc file (and in linux.mk we anyway don't pass the approprate PKG_CONFIG_* variables), this will pick up the system's pkg-config settings. However, we set HOSTCC="/usr/bin/gcc -O2 -I.../host/include -L.../host/lib -Wl,-rpath,.../host/lib" on the linux make command line, so it *will* actually pick up our host-ncurses library. On my system, 'pkg-config --libs ncurses' returns '-lncurses -ltinfo'. Our ncurses only has libncurses.so, so libtinfo.so will be picked up from the host.

Ahh :/

Quoted 6 lines

The question is how to resolve this. The correct thing to do would be to
install the .pc file, and to do what Thomas proposed a while ago:
$(HOST_DIR)/bin/pkg-config returns the host config, $(CROSS_COMPILE)pkg-config returns the target config. But this will probably result in breakage of a lot of packages...

Quoted 1 line

Any better ideas?

Is that really needed? Can't we just change linux.mk to use HOST_MAKE_ENV instead of TARGET_MAKE_ENV (it is a target package, but it only needs to link against host libraries). That wil ensure that the PKG_CONFIG_* environment variables are set, so if we were to install a ncurses(w) pc file for the host, kconfig should find and use it?