How to build goncurses on os x, centos 6

Question

OS X, Centos 6 and Debian Squeeze all come with v5.7 of ncurses, but the go wrapper "goncurses" requires 5.9. Trying to build it on any of those platforms will give you an error like this:

$ go get -v code.google.com/p/goncurses
code.google.com/p/goncurses
# code.google.com/p/goncurses 
/tmp/go-build527609801/code.google.com/p/goncurses/_obj/goncurses.o: 
In function 'ncurses_is_subwin':src/code.google.com/p/goncurses/goncurses.c:71: undefined reference to `is_subwin'
/tmp/go-build527609801/code.google.com/p/goncurses/_obj/goncurses.o: 
In function 'ncurses_is_pad':src/code.google.com/p/goncurses/goncurses.c:63: undefined reference to `is_pad'

You can use homebrew to install ncurses v5.9 on os x, and build from source into /usr/local/ on linux, but how do you get go to use your upgraded ncurses when building?

Answer 1

@JimB answered my other question How to change lib path for "go build" with a suggestion to leverage pkg-config, which solution will look like this:

On CentOS 6 you can build ncurses from source like this, which will put the .pc files that drive pkg-config into your own directory instead of /usr/lib64/pkgconfig/

mkdir ~/local-pkg-config
PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR=~/local-pkg-config ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/ --enable-pc-files --with-pkg-config
make && make install

On OS X you can install ncurses from homebrew. Homebrew usually puts .pc files along with the package, e.g. /usr/local/Cellar/pango/1.34.1/lib/pkgconfig/pango.pc. For some reason homebrew doesn't have any .pc files with its ncurses, but I successfully grabbed the CentOS ones into ~/local-pkg-config and changed them to suit:

@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
-prefix=/usr/local/
+prefix=/usr/local/Cellar/ncurses/5.9/
 exec_prefix=${prefix}
 libdir=${exec_prefix}/lib
-includedir=${prefix}/include/ncurses
+includedir=${prefix}/include
 major_version=5
 version=5.9.20110404

Now on either platform you're set up to go get the goncurses package:

PKG_CONFIG_PATH=~/local-pkg-config/ go get -v code.google.com/p/goncurses

Answer 2

This Gist is a modified ncurses formula for Homebrew that adds the .pc files to the keg. If you install ncurses with it, use the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable to point pkg-config to the .pc files, before calling go build or go run.

$ export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/Cellar/ncurses/5.9/lib/pkgconfig
$ go run your_ncurses_program.go