As of php-5.3.0, the ncurses extension is no longer bundled in. Instead, it has been moved out to a PECL package, which is not part of the current portage tree. This ebuild is a candidate for a new "dev-php5/pecl-ncurses" package. I'm not sure if this ebuild should check for ( >=php-5.3 and/or <php-5.3[-ncurses])... This ebuild has only been tested on amd64 against dev-lang/php-5.3.2
Created attachment 236307 [details] pecl-ncurses ebuild candidate
Created attachment 236309 [details] minor changes Fixed some typos, and removed the $Header macro that pointed to pecl-fileinfo
Changing owner and CC:ing php herd since this probably should end up there if it goes in.
Thanks for the ebuild! Added to the php overlay for now. I opted for php-5.3 only. I also thought about re-adding the ncurses USE flag to php, but then thought better of it. People using this extension are probably aware of it moving to pecl.
WOW! Talk about being thrown to the wolves! Somehow I wasn't aware that ncurses support was going to be taken from PHP at 5.3; the old documentation package (which is still the most recent in Portage) says it won't be removed until 6.0. I didn't know it would happen so soon. In any event my ncurses-using script broke in my PHP 5.3 installation. The downward spiral gets worse and worse. The USE flag is gone (I hadn't noticed) and there is no pecl-ncurses package in Portage. I emerged layman and looked hopefully to the PHP overlay only to see that dev-php5/pecl-ncurses is not there either. So now I dug through documentation (not all in once place) to find out how to make my own overlay and plunk down the ebuild that Brandon posted here (attachment 236309 [details]). I see that I needed to apply some glue in the form of ebuild pecl-ncurses-1.0.0.ebuild manifest but this gives me the error message need_php_by_category: command not found Now I'm really in the dark. This is really vexing. While it is true that the PHP ncurses extension is marked as experimental, the ncurses USE flag was indeed a stable feature of PHP 5.2, linking as it did to a super-stable mainline library that gets tons of use. I really think the ncurses USE flag should come back--after all, it's very common for Gentoo packages to pick up other dependencies as a function of the USE flags. This would also cut down on the size of the world file. Where can I go from here, though? Can I fix this ebuild easily enough (I've never written one, after all), or should I just go ahead and apply the configure-and-make approach and apply this code outside of package management?
Created attachment 299469 [details] New proposed ebuild I feel so proud. I modified that ebuild using another PECL ebuild as a guide, dug through the eclasses to figure out how to use phpize to get a configure script where I could see what the configure options are. This time I was successful in getting a manifest and got the package to emerge. I'll have to get back with you about how well it works. So, better than telling me what I got wrong about the ebuild--I'm sure there's plenty--please try to get the package ready for release.
(In reply to comment #6) > Created attachment 299469 [details] > New proposed ebuild Aw, I'm sorry. When we decided to take the overlay down I wasn't thinking there might be someone still relying on anything there. I added dev-php/pecl-ncurses to the tree, have fun and thanks for taking the time to report this. I'll have the arch teams take a look if they wany yo keyword it, too (at the moment it's only available for ~amd64).
