Upgrading ncurses 4 to ncurses 5

[Miguel Quiros]

                                Granada, 17-4-2001

Hello, I have tried to upgrade ncurses from the version 4.2 (actually running
in my Red Hat 6.1 system, with kernel upgraded to 2.4.3) to the version 5.2.

I have downloaded the rpm ncurses-5.2-8.i386.rpm and tried to upgrade (rpm -U)
but rpm complains that there are many packages installed that use the file
libncurses.so.4 which would be removed from the system if the upgrade is made.

If if try "rpm -i" instead (so that the file libncurses.so.4 is kept) then rpm
complains that there are many files of version 4 (in the directories /usr/bin
and /usr/share/terminfo) that would be overwritten.

Is it absolutely neccesary to upgrade all packages that use version 4 to install
version 5 (if so, I would need to reserve a weekend or two for downloading
and installing such amount of software!).

If I make "rpm -i", libncurses.so.4 will be compatible with the
new files in /usr/bin and /usr/share/terminfo?

Is there any other easy solution?

I have seen a few messages in this mailing-list and it looks like a place for
developers and compilers, not for a simple linux-user like me (that usually
does not compile anything and simply downloads and installs rpm's) so, if there
is a better place to pose this question (or a place with user-level 
information for ncurses) please tell me.

Just a thinking: if we want to spread the use of linux against other, more
popular, operating systems, a key subject is to keep (as much as possible) 
backwards compatibility of the new versions of any utility, specially if
this utility is used by many others.

Thank you for any help.

Best wishes,
        Miguel Quirós
-------------------------
Miguel Quirós Olozábal
Departamento de Química Inorgánica. Facultad de Ciencias.
Universidad de Granada. 18071 Granada (SPAIN).
email:address@hidden