Package: release.debian.org
Severity: normal
Tags: buster d-i
User: release.debian....@packages.debian.org
Usertags: pu

I have just uploaded ncurses 6.1+20181013-2+deb10u1 to Buster which
contains a one-line fix for bug #933053[1], the same as in version
6.1+20190713-2 which is now in testing.

Some background: for about 20 years, xterm has support for a special
escape sequence which causes characters to be repeated.  In ncurses
6.1-1 and later, an entry was added to the xterm* terminfo descriptions
announcing this feature.  The ncurses library makes use of it for line
drawing characters.

Now there are many terminal emulators out there who set TERM to xterm or
xterm-256color, and they did generally not actually support this escape
sequence, leading to the line drawing characters not repeated which
looks then very bad.  You can see a few screenshots in bug #933053.

Most popular terminal emulators in Buster have already been fixed, so
desktop systems are largely unaffected.  However, if people connect to a
Buster server from an older system, say Debian 9 or Ubuntu 16.04, they
may experience this issue.

The solution is to drop the particular entry from the xterm* terminfo
entries, so that the ncurses library no longer uses it.  I have tested
the fix with the Stretch versions of konsole and gnome-terminal and a
Buster chroot.

Since ncurses builds a udeb I need a d-i ack, debian-boot@ and kibi@
are already in X-Debbugs-CC.  The libraries are not touched by the patch
and are identical with and without it.  The xterm terminfo file is used
by src:debian-installer-utils to build di-utils-terminfo.udeb, but only
on kfreebsd.


1. https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=933053

diff -Nru ncurses-6.1+20181013/debian/changelog ncurses-6.1+20181013/debian/changelog
--- ncurses-6.1+20181013/debian/changelog	2019-02-11 18:17:20.000000000 +0100
+++ ncurses-6.1+20181013/debian/changelog	2019-08-05 20:03:21.000000000 +0200
@@ -1,3 +1,10 @@
+ncurses (6.1+20181013-2+deb10u1) buster; urgency=medium
+
+  * Drop "rep" from xterm-new and derived terminfo descriptions
+    (Closes: #933053).
+
+ -- Sven Joachim <svenj...@gmx.de>  Mon, 05 Aug 2019 20:03:21 +0200
+
 ncurses (6.1+20181013-2) unstable; urgency=medium
 
   * Add Breaks against libmono-corlib4.5-cil (<< 4.6.2.7+dfsg-2)
diff -Nru ncurses-6.1+20181013/debian/xterm.ti ncurses-6.1+20181013/debian/xterm.ti
--- ncurses-6.1+20181013/debian/xterm.ti	2019-02-11 18:16:04.000000000 +0100
+++ ncurses-6.1+20181013/debian/xterm.ti	2019-08-05 20:02:15.000000000 +0200
@@ -136,7 +136,7 @@
 	kcbt=\E[Z,
 	kent=\EOM,
 	rin=\E[%p1%dT,
-	use=ansi+rep,
+#	use=ansi+rep,
 	use=ecma+strikeout,
 	use=xterm+pcfkeys,
 	use=xterm+tmux,

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