ncurses detection fails on ubuntu-22 / ubuntu-24

[rkabrick]

New Issue for sst-core

1 - Detailed description of problem or enhancement
When trying to build sst-core on ubuntu (with ncurses installed via apt-get) the configure script fails to locate ncurses even with --with-curses option specified.

2 - Describe how to reproduce the issue
On a fresh install of ubuntu do:

sudo apt install openmpi-bin openmpi-common libtool libtool-bin autoconf python3 python3-dev automake build-essential git libncurses-dev

3 - What Operating system(s) and versions

• Ubuntu 22
• Ubuntu 24

4 - What versions of external libraries (MPI, etc.)
Tried with libncurses-dev, libncurses6, libncurses5, libncursesw5, libncursesw6

5 - Provide sha1 of all relevant SST repositories (sst-core, sst-elements, etc)

tags/v14.0.0_Final: 0693c06

[berquist]

The problem is that

sst-core/config/sst_check_curses.m4

Line 50 in 2f7b13d

AC_SEARCH_LIBS([initscr], [$CURSES_LIBS], [], [sst_check_curses_happy="no"])

evaluates the macro before the shell variable when the initially desired behavior was the other way around. The generated code is

LIBS="-l$CURSES_LIBS  $LIBS"

which then expands to -l-lncurses -ltinfo ... which is obviously wrong, but there is something about the library location or linker search paths on non-Ubuntu platforms where it works anyway.

[berquist]

@rkabrick Could you try again with the latest version of core from the devel branch?