Re: mutt on macOS and --with-curses=DIR

"Kevin J. McCarthy" <[email protected]> Sun, 12 Apr 2026 21:15:24 +0800
Newsgroups	gmane.mail.mutt.devel
Message-ID	<adua7Ln4wx03cx0a@qinghai>
On Sun, Apr 12, 2026 at 12:54:42PM +0200, Dennis Preiser wrote:
>On Sun, Apr 12, 2026 at 03:38:12PM +0800, Kevin J. McCarthy wrote:
>> On Sun, Apr 12, 2026 at 01:16:48PM +0800, Kevin J. McCarthy wrote:
>> > What is installed in your ~/sw/include and lib directory for ncurses,
>> > and exactly where?
>>
>> And the same for the system libraries.

Thanks for all the details.  It makes it clearer.

[...]

>dennis@coredump:~% ls -l ~/sw/lib/*curses*
>-rw-r--r--@ 1 dennis  staff  111536 Apr 12 11:15 /Users/dennis/sw/lib/libncurses++w.a
>-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 dennis  staff  364096 Apr 12 11:15 /Users/dennis/sw/lib/libncursesw.6.dylib
>-rw-r--r--@ 1 dennis  staff  642392 Apr 12 11:15 /Users/dennis/sw/lib/libncursesw.a
>lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 dennis  staff      19 Apr 12 11:15 /Users/dennis/sw/lib/libncursesw.dylib -> libncursesw.6.dylib

So mutt's configure.ac is looking for a 'ncurses' library first, and 
then, if that fails, looking for 'ncursesw'.  Your install under 
~/sw/lib/ only has ncursesw files.  So mutt finds the system libraries 
first and uses them:

>dennis@coredump:.../Developer/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk% ls -l usr/lib/*curses*
>lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel     18 Mar 25 19:51 usr/lib/libcurses.tbd -> libncurses.5.4.tbd
>-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  21256 Feb 21 23:58 usr/lib/libncurses.5.4.tbd
>lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel     18 Mar 25 19:51 usr/lib/libncurses.5.tbd -> libncurses.5.4.tbd
>lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel     18 Mar 25 19:51 usr/lib/libncurses.tbd -> libncurses.5.4.tbd

It's really as simple as that.  If you want mutt to see your ~/sw/lib/
version you'll need it to shadow your system libraries.  Either via
--disable-lib-suffixes or creating symlinks.

I know you tried that before, but *only* creating those lib symlinks 
still has a problem.  The headers are installed under 
~/sw/include/ncursesw/.  When using the ncurses library file, mutt will 
look first for ncurses/ncurses.h and then fall back on ncurses.h.  Mutt 
will again find the system ncurses.h file and that will cause the symbol 
matching issues:

>dennis@coredump:.../Developer/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk% ls -l usr/include/(*curses|eti|form|menu|panel|term(\.|_|cap)|unc)*
[...]
>-rw-r--r--@ 1 root  wheel  161910 Feb 22 00:00 usr/include/curses.h
>lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel       8 Mar 25 19:51 usr/include/ncurses.h -> curses.h

Perhaps a symlink from ~sw/include/ncurses to ~/sw/include/ncursesw, or 
using --enable-overwrite will fix this issue.

-- 
Kevin J. McCarthy
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