[Vala] Vala and Curses

[Timothy Sassone <timothy s dev gmail com>]

Hello, my name is Timothy; I recently set up the Gnome version of Linux Mint
to dual-boot on my desktop.  I do a fair bit of hobby programming, mostly in
C++ or C# up to this point, and I'd like to try Vala.  I've followed the
avaliable tutorials, and I'm getting the hang of the differences between it
and C# (as well as Java, which the university I'm attending teaches).  I
would like to try developing a curses-based (ncurses) application using Vala
and MonoDevelop, but I'm having some difficulties in setting it up.

I first tried downloading the tar through firefox, unzipped it, and tried to
build it using:

./configure
make

The configure command worked, but I received errors when I tried to make it:

make[1]: *** [../objects/cursesf.o] Error 127
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/-------/Desktop/ncurses-5.9/c++'
make: *** [all] Error 2

At a later suggestion I found through Google, I tried to apt-get ncurses:
sudo apt-get install build-essentials
sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev

But it couldn't seem to find either package.  Unfortunately, my only real
experience in programming thus far has been in either NetBeans or Visual
Studio, and both on Windows.  Any pointers on how to set up MonoDevelop/Vala
to work with curses would be most appreciated!  Ncurses was attempted only
because my initial searches for Vala curses bindings/vapi file returned
results from this mailing list, in which is mentioned being tested and
functional with ncurses.  Any curses variant/branch which works with Vala
would be fine.

Thank you for your time and effort,
Timothy S.