ok, the good news is that with 1.2.30, we're no longer seeing the segfault. the bad news is that we error out due to an inability to load up notcurses without a TERM variable.
the proper fix for this is to avoid using notcurses in any case where we're not connected to a tty. i can get this done today, but it will be a slightly more invasive patch (~20 lines, i would guess). it'll still be tightly targeted at this problem. once again, this is a use case that doesn't really reflect how the tool would be used, and while it's a real regression, it is being highlit primarily due to how the autopkgtests are run. i don't want to disable the autopkgtests, but i also don't want to get bounced from the release due to this. my plan is to address this today, cut it as 1.2.31, and upload it to unstable. sorry for the churn during soft freeze. =[