Comment # 15 on bug 978993 from Stanislav Brabec

The explanation of this bug is even more obscure:

New builds use --with-ncurses, which does not mean what I naively expected:
Force to use ncurses(w|) and fail if it is not detected. It is intended to mean
something different:

  --with-ncurses          build with non-wide ncurses, default is wide version
                          (--without-ncurses disables all ncurses(w) support)

But it does not work as described.


The old version of the check (in SLE 11) worked exactly as described: Forced
downgrade to non-wide version of ncurses. But author of the pkgconfig detection
in configure.ac that existed in Leap 42.1 and SLE 12 did not follow the
description and implemented simple check, first ncursesw then ncurses.

The check now works in a strange way:

--without-ncurses means: Disable all versions of ncurses.

--with-ncurses means:

- If ncurses is detected by pkgconfig files, --with-ncurses is a NOP.

- If pkgconfig files are not present, it falls back to the described meaning:
Force non-wide version of the library.

The trivial fix: Remove --with-ncurses.


In SLE 11, --with-ncurses was not used.

Leap 42.1 and SLE 12 contain ncurses5 without pkgconfig files, so the original
meaning of --with-ncurses applies. util-linux is downgraded to non-wide version
of ncurses, but widechar support is kept. => This cannot work.

Tumbleweed uses ncurses6 with pkgconfig files, so the problem does not appear
(--with-ncurses in its original meaning does not work).


Upstream report:

http://marc.info/?l=util-linux-ng&m=146488306920000&w=2