configure --without-curses not honoured

[strk]

Building after ./configure --without-curses results in lots of errors eventually originating here:

/usr/src/grass/grass-6.4.3/dist.x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/include/grass/vask.h:5:20: fatal error: curses.h: No such file or directory

[neteler]

libncurses4.x/5.x is a requirement for GRASS GIS 6:

​http://grass.osgeo.org/grass64/source/REQUIREMENTS.html

You will need to install (n)curses-dev(el).

[strk]

In that case shouldn't ./configure exit with an error ?

[glynn]

Replying to neteler:

libncurses4.x/5.x is a requirement for GRASS GIS 6:

Sort of. If you build without curses, most of GRASS will still be built. While the end result is rather "rough", it may well be sufficient for some people. But where it fails, it won't fail particularly gracefully (some parts of GRASS simply assume that certain modules will exist, and with curses disabled, they won't).

Building GRASS 6.x without curses support is sufficiently uncommon that it isn't worth the (significant) effort of "polishing". --without-curses was added so that people who could live with the end result had that option, rather than simply having the configure script fail.

This doesn't apply to GRASS 7, where curses support has been removed entirely (no configure checks, modules which use curses have been re-written, disabled, or removed).