ncurses-6.1 vs. slang-2.3.1 broken

[Egmont Koblinger <egmont gmail com>]

FYI:

This combination:

- MC compiled against S-Lang,
- S-Lang version 2.3.1 (or older),
- terminfo (ncurses) version 6.1 (or newer),
- TERM=xterm-256color

breaks the arrow keys and probably much more.

This is because slang reads the binary terminfo files manually, rather than via libtinfo, and ncurses-6.1 switched to a new binary format for some of its files (including xterm-256color but not xterm).

Solution:
- Upgrade to S-Lang pre2.3.2-19 or newer
- Downgrade to ncurses/terminfo 6.0 or older

Workaround:
- export TERM=xterm

But most importantly, anyone encountering this should immediately notify their distribution, pointing them to e.g. http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-ncurses/2018-01/msg00053.html .

This is not a bug in Midnight Commander, nor in the terminal emulator.


cheers,
egmont