Skip to content

Commit

Permalink
doc: Update netbsd/README regarding curses support
Browse files Browse the repository at this point in the history
Signed-off-by: Kang-Che Sung <[email protected]>
  • Loading branch information
Explorer09 committed Aug 23, 2024
1 parent 46e8242 commit cfbafb8
Showing 1 changed file with 15 additions and 8 deletions.
23 changes: 15 additions & 8 deletions netbsd/README.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -13,14 +13,21 @@ NetBSD is one of the last operating systems to use and maintain its own
implementation of Curses.

htop(1) can be compiled against either ncurses or NetBSD's curses(3).
In order for NetBSD's libcurses to be used, htop(1) must be configured with
`--disable-unicode`. This is necessary because htop(1) with Unicode enabled
directly accesses ncurses's cchar_t struct, which has different contents
in NetBSD's curses.

Versions of libcurses in NetBSD 9 and prior have no mouse support
(this is an ncurses extension). Newer versions contain no-op mouse functions
for compatibility with ncurses.
htop(1) would use ncurses by default when it is found, as NetBSD's curses
support in htop is limited.

To use NetBSD's libcurses, htop(1) must be configured with `--disable-unicode`.
Starting with htop 3.4.0, a new option `--with-curses=curses` may be specified
to let `configure` skip ncurses when both libraries are installed.

Technical caveats regarding NetBSD's curses support:

* htop with Unicode enabled directly accesses ncurses's `cchar_t` struct, which
has different contents in NetBSD's curses.

* Versions of libcurses in NetBSD 9 and prior have no mouse support
(this is an ncurses extension). Newer versions contain no-op mouse functions
for compatibility with ncurses.

What needs improvement
---
Expand Down

0 comments on commit cfbafb8

Please sign in to comment.