AIX and _nc_is_abs_path

[Ben Lentz]

Hello,
I'm trying to build ncurses-5.9 for AIX and I've found that somewhere 
after 5.5 and starting with 5.8 and 5.9, a dependency on the function 
_nc_is_abs_path was added in several places.

I've tried looking around (unsuccessfully) and I'm pretty sure I don't 
have this function in any of the AIX system libraries.

I tried adding -UNCURSES_TERM_ENTRY_H_incl to CFLAGS while doing 
./configure (I thought maybe the hooks in ./include/term_entry.h would 
help me) but there are still references in tset.c.

If I set -UNCURSES_TERM_ENTRY_H_incl, hack out the references to 
_nc_is_abs_path in tset.c, then the build proceeds further, but dies 
linking toe:

        gcc -g -Wl,-blibpath:/opt/local/bash/lib:/usr/lib:/lib,-brtl 
-maix64 ../obj_s/toe.o -L/opt/local/bash/lib -I../progs -I. 
-DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I/opt/local/bash/include  -D_ALL_SOURCE -DNDEBUG -I. 
-I../include -I/opt/local/bash/include/ncurses -I/opt/local/bash/include 
-UNCURSES_TERM_ENTRY_H_incl  --param max-inline-insns-single=1200   
-L../lib -lncurses -L../lib -lncurses    -o toe
ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: ._nc_is_dir_path
ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: ._nc_is_file_path
ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: ._nc_first_db
ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: ._nc_next_db
ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: ._nc_last_db

I've read the INSTALL document and googled my heart out for this issue 
and am trying this mailing list as a last resort before I give in an 
revert back to an older version that compiles without issue on AIX.