Bug#844705: libedit-dev: Missing build dependency - ncurses

[Mark Gillott]

Package: libedit-dev
Version: 3.1-20160903-1
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

An application makes use of the libedit-dev library. In a recent updated
from Debian8 to Debian9 the (previously working) build failed. The
reason for the failure was a missing library - ncurses:

[   68s] cc -g -fdebug-prefix-map=/usr/src/packages/BUILD=.
-fstack-protector-strong -Wformat -Werror=format-security -O3 -g -Wall
-Wextra -Werror -I/usr/include/json-c -I/usr/include/editline
-Wdate-time -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -D_GNU_SOURCE -I ../ctrldb -Wl,-z,relro
-o vplsh \
[   68s]       vplsh.o ../ctrldb/ctrldb.o -lczmq -lzmq -ljson-c -ledit
-lncurses -lbsd
[   68s] /usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lncurses
[   68s] collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
[   68s] Makefile:21: recipe for target 'vplsh' failed
[   68s] make[2]: *** [vplsh] Error 1

The line in the makefile is simply:

   VPLSH_LIBS  = $(LIBS) $(shell pkg-config --libs libedit)

The fix was to modify the application control file so as to add
libncurses5-dev as an explicit dependency.

Ultimately the libedit-dev package file should have called out the
dependency and pulled in the necessary support library. Either that or
eliminate ncurses if its not actually required.

Thanks,

Mark