Custom termcap entries and installworld

[Matthew Seaman]

Stephen Hurd wrote:
> Stephen Hurd wrote:
>> So, I suppose my questions are these:
>> 1) How do people cope with custom termcap entries?
>> 2) Is there a *correct* way to cope with custom termcap entries?
>> 3) Is there a good reason to not have /usr/share/misc/termcap be a
>> symlink to /etc/termcap rather than the reverse which would allow
>> mergemaster to Just Work?  that is... putting it in /etc fixes a
>> problem... does moving it create one or more more serious problems?
>> 4) Am I supposed to submit every custom termcap tweak for inclusion in
>> the next release so I can keep using my terminals?
> Anyone?

I think you're not going to have much luck here.  Custom termcap entries
are not something that most FreeBSD users deal with and consequently there
does not seem to be any useful mechanism established for managing them.

The curses(3X) man page seems to be they key reference.  Particularly
the section on environment variables: TERM, TERMCAP, TERMPATH.  It does
also mention the possibility of using ${HOME}/.termcap to hold supplementary
termcap entries. However, these man pages are rather confusing: many of them
talk about terminfo(5) in terms of 'it is going to replace termcap(5) any
day now'.  But terminfo(5) is a SysV-ism and supported only as a compatibility
thing under FreeBSD.

Most people will be perfectly happy with the default termcap database -- so
long as it provides xterm / vt100 and cons25 almost all situations are covered.

For your purposes if using environment variables to achieve your ends turns out
not to be workable, then I'd suggest keeping a backup copy of your customised
termcap somewhere where system updates won't overwrite it -- keeping it
in CVS or similar would be a good move -- and writing yourself a little
script to merge in your changes to /usr/share/misc/termcap and then re-run
'cap_mkdb /usr/share/misc/termcap' after a system update.  I've a feeling that
/etc/termcap is there mostly for historical compatibility now-adays.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       7 Priory Courtyard
                                                      Flat 3
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey         Ramsgate
                                                      Kent, CT11 9PW

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