libncurses5 package missing on 23.10

Looks like it was also removed in Debian testing?

Are you sure that re-adding the outdated libncurses5 package to Ubuntu (and Debian) is the right way forward?

In my opinion it makes more sense to modify the Android Open Source Project, such that it works with the current libncurses6 package.

The amount of work that needs to be done to migrate Renderscript from Clang 3 (what uses libncurses5) to Clang 14 is not insignificant, it's a massive project: (https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/rs/+/refs/heads/main).

It's much less work to just keep the libncurses5 package if at all possible.

Looks like this is caused by this commit: https://salsa.debian.org/debian/ncurses/-/commit/11d067455801fddf8c65eba6e447ef7aacd1d703

A simple revert would fix our issues.

You found out that Debian is responsible for that decision (see also https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1025964 ), so there is not much to be discussed in Ubuntu for that case, because in general Ubuntu follows Debian.

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.

This also breaks every version of Xilinx's Vivado and PetaLinux.

application-specific initialization failed: couldn't load file "librdi_commontasks.so": libtinfo.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

This needs to be added back?

Okay, it seems you can just install libtinfo5 from Ubuntu 23.04 here, https://packages.ubuntu.com/lunar/amd64/libtinfo5/download
In my case I simply needed libtinfo5, I did not try to also install libncurses5 (but libtinfo5 is a pre-req for libncurses5)

Vivado launches fine for me now.

Note that this also breaks the PassMark benchmarks

@m-hampl Debian did not respond when I sent an email asking for the package to be re-added to Debian. Is this something that we can get in place for Ubuntu 24.04? As you can see from the last 3 comments, this does not just affect AOSP (although that's the most significant, being the most popular mobile OS in the world).

Google has started work on deprecating libncurses5 host usage internally (see https://groups.google.com/g/android-building/c/Sv_v2ApJZug), but that will not happen until at least Android 15 (later this year), and does not at all address the previous Android releases that are still supported and get security tags. We need this package to continue building AOSP for those previous releases.

I sent an email to <email address hidden>, and also CC'd the author of the libncurses5 removal. Is there a more preferred way for Debian requests?