The Coq mailing list

[Evgeny Makarov <emakarov AT gmail.com>]

> "COQMKTOP -o bin/coqtop.byte
> /usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lcurses
> collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
> Error while building custom runtime system
> make: *** [bin/coqtop.byte] Error 2"

I think I had a similar problem. The thing is that the curses library, 
which is used in writing text user interface, is no longer available. 
Instead, its functionality is available through ncurses ("new curses") 
library. The tricky point is that the library curses, which is required 
by the linker through -lcurses option, is not in the ncurses package. 
Instead, it is provided by the ncurses-devel package. For example, in 
Fedora 7 I have ncurses-devel version 5.6 installed, and it contains the 
file /usr/lib/libcurses.so, which is what you need. On Fedora, 
ncurses-devel package can be installed using the menu Application | 
Add/Remove Software.

There are two questions about this.

1. Is coqtop.byte really necessary if -opt option was given during Coq 
configure?

2. Is it possible to update the code to use ncurses (hopefully, simple, 
not devel, since I believe that simple ncurses is available by default) 
instead of curses?

Evgeny