HP-UX 11i Version 2 May 2005 Release Notes

Libraries and Programming

Termcap and Curses Interfaces

Chapter 10

179

Applications utilizing these libraries should migrate to the standard X/Open curses

interfaces. The Termcap (libtermcap, libtermlib) and HP curses (libHcurses)

interfaces were deprecated in HP-UX 10.20 and will be removed in a future release.

Impact

Because system archive libraries are not provided in HP-UX 11i v2 for Itanium®-based

platforms, you should ensure that application makefiles do not specify archive system

libraries. Instead, applications should use shared libraries. While native archive

libraries are provided on HP-UX 11i v2 for HP 9000 (PA-RISC) platforms, it is

recommended that you use shared libraries. Shared libraries have the following benefits:

• Shared libraries avoid binding architecture dependencies into the application. This

is especially important for PA-RISC applications running on Itanium®-based

systems.

• Defect fixes are picked up automatically when a library is patched.

• The performance difference between archive and shared libraries is decreasing as

new run-time architectures are optimized for shared libraries.

Compatibility

Makefiles specifying archived libraries will have to be modified to use shared libraries.

Applications utilizing the legacy interfaces of Termcap or HP curses will need to be

migrated to the X/Open curses interfaces.

Performance

There are no known performance issues.

Documentation

The white paper “Migrating HP curses applications to Xcurses” is included with the

HP-UX Software Transition Kit. The transition kit also includes information on

migrating your source base from archive libraries to shared libraries. The latest version

of the transition kit is available at http://www.hp.com/go/STK.

Obsolescence

The classic HP curses library, libHcurses, and Termcap libraries will be obsolete in a

future release.

1. See also “Software Transition Kit” on page 178.