Subject: bug#3960: 23.1.50; "Cannot open termcap database error" error

From: Chong Yidong <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Aug 2009 18:41:50 -0400

> Under Debian testing, libncurses5-dev is required to build Emacs.
> Otherwise it throws a "Cannot open termcap database" error.

See the PROBLEMS file:

  ** Emacs does not start, complaining that it cannot open termcap
     database file.

  If your system uses Terminfo rather than termcap (most modern
  systems do), this could happen if the proper version of
  ncurses is not visible to the Emacs configure script (i.e. it
  cannot be found along the usual path the linker looks for
  libraries). It can happen because your version of ncurses is
  obsolete, or is available only in form of binaries.

  The solution is to install an up-to-date version of ncurses in
  the developer's form (header files, static libraries and
  symbolic links); in some GNU/Linux distributions (e.g. Debian)
  it constitutes a separate package.