Setting up the ncurses library on Ubuntu 12.04

Question

I installed the package libncurses5-dev from the Software Center and then checked for the header file :

asheesh@ashrj-U32U:~$ ls -l /usr/include/*curses.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 76291 Nov 18  2011 /usr/include/curses.h
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root     8 Nov 18  2011 /usr/include/ncurses.h -> curses.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 12180 Apr 11  2011 /usr/include/slcurses.h

Then, i checked for the library files :

asheesh@ashrj-U32U:~$ find /usr/lib/ -name "*curses*"
....
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcurses.a
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libncurses.so
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcurses.so
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libncurses.a
....

which are not present.

How do i install/make the library files ? Why werent they set up along with the standard package ?

On simply compiling, i get the error :

asheesh@ashrj-U32U:~$ gcc -o screen1 screen1.c -lcurses
asheesh@ashrj-U32U:~$ screen1
No command 'screen1' found, did you mean:
 Command 'screen' from package 'screen' (main)
screen1: command not found

How do i use these library files ?

Solution

Here is a totally trivial program that uses (barely) the ncurses library:

#include "ncurses.h"
int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
  /* Yes, I know, but you don't care about actually using ncurses for the moment */
  return 0;
}

Compile with:

 gcc test.c -o test -lncurses

Then run with:

  ./test

I've found this tutorial to be a good starting point and this howto to be quite a useful reference when dealing with ncurses.

Comments

[asheeshr]

[Facepalm to self] Apparently specifying the complete directory was needed, nothing else.

[MestreLion]

@AsheeshR: it's not needed if the executable is in your PATH. Turns out the current directory isn't, for a very good reason ;)