rnowley / csharp-ncurses Goto Github PK

With a few simple changes, I think the project can easily address the problem of different ncurses library names on different target platforms. I've seen a few comments on SO and your blog where Windows devs can't quite figure out how to get this project going. This way it's literally a load-and-launch project from VS2017 (as long as you also drop the DLL into a %path% folder, as described in the wiki).

The changes are in this branch on my fork:
https://github.com/MV10/csharp-ncurses/tree/library-from-build-target

• This adds Runtime Identifiers (RID) and constants for win-x64, linux-x64, and osx-64
• This and this sets the const cursesLib based on the RID target

I've used RIDs to create cross-platform ASP.NET Core SCDs (self-contained deployments) -- I build and test on Windows, then deploy a release build to a headless Linux farm.

This is why I posted here instead of opening a PR: I develop on Windows. I'm not sure of the impact of this change for non-Windows developers. As-written, the #if block defaults to the Windows DLL. Will VSCode on OSX launch in debug with the correct RID so that debug works? Can someone try this and let me know?

Hi Raymond,

Thanks for providing this library. I'm beginning to dabble in an ncurses project and it should prove helpful.

I had some small issues getting the Hello World sample running on Windows 10 using Git Bash inside ConEmu, and thought it may benefit someone else if it were documented. I'm not sure if this is assumed knowledge for the target audience of your library (or even a legitimate issue), so I have not submitted a PR to amend README.md, nor created a Wiki page.

Learnings:

• Get libncursesw6.dll. Version 6.1 available here as of 04-2018.
  • Place it somewhere that features in %PATH%.
  • Reference it in ..\csharp-ncurses\csharp-ncurses\NativeMethods.cs
• Start a Bash shell. I use ConEmu, via a task which runs the following: "C:\Program Files\Git\git-cmd.exe" --no-cd --command=usr/bin/bash.exe -l -i:
  • pwd -> [..]/sample/helloWorld
  • echo $TERM -> cygwin
  • dotnet build
  • dotnet run -> Error opening terminal: cygwin.
  • export TERMINFO="C:\Program Files\Git\usr\lib\terminfo"
  • dotnet run -> Goodbye cruel #C programming as expected

Pointing ncurses to the Cygwin terminfo file ("C:\Program Files\Git\usr\lib\terminfo\63\cygwin") via $TERMINFO seems to be the key. Mintty (what git-bash.exe wraps) launches Bash with $TERM=xterm, $TERMINFO=, and can run the Hello World sample OK, but it seems git-cmd.exe, running Bash, requires setting $TERMINFO.

Hope that helps someone.

Cheers,
Tom