Cannot initialize Ncurses in macOS

[ronisbr]

Hi!

For some reason, I cannot initialize Ncurses using Ncurses_jll in macOS.

julia> using Ncurses_jll

julia> ccall( (:initscr, libncurses), Cvoid, ())
Error opening terminal: xterm-256color.

After that, julia crashes. Passing the env. option TERM=xterm did not help also.

I can start Ncurses normally if I use the library that ships with macOS or the library in home-brew.

[giordano]

You probably need to set the environment variable TERMINFINO_DIRS:

julia> using Ncurses_jll

julia> withenv("TERMINFO_DIRS" => joinpath(Ncurses_jll.artifact_dir, "share", "terminfo")) do
           ccall( (:initscr, libncurses), Cvoid, ())
       end

[giordano]

Also TERMINFO should work. In any case, it's better to wrap the calls in a withenv to avoid setting this variable for the whole Julia session

[ronisbr]

This work! However, I need to set for the whole Julia session, otherwise I will have to do a strange logic because I need to let the user to load its own ncurses version. Is there any downside?

[giordano]

This work!

Great, then I'm going to close the ticket.

Is there any downside?

The only problem can arise if there are other, different instances of ncurses loaded in the same session, that might be wrecked by this setting. The probability of this situation is likely very low. If all Julia packages needing ncurses use Ncurses_jll there will be no problem, of course.

You're free to set the variable with ENV["TERMINFO"], just be aware that if someone will complain about TextUserInterfaces.jl breaking other packages that use ncurses, that's likely the issue.

[ronisbr]

Thanks very much for the quick help!