gh-136687: allow manually excluding ncurses from the build

[duaneg]

Add an option to manually exclude ncurses from the build.

• Issue: ./configure misses option to avoid building with ncurses #136687

[sobolevn]

Please, don't forget to update Doc/using/configure.rst with the new option.

I haven't reviewed the AC code, because I am not an expert there :)

[duaneg]

Please, don't forget to update Doc/using/configure.rst with the new option.

Ah, thanks! I didn't spot those docs, updated. On review I think it would be better to think of this from the higher-level user perspective of excluding the curses module, rather than the lower-level build perspective of "skipping a system library check". I've renamed the option --disable-curses, instead of disable-ncurses, accordingly.

Although that does prompt the question of whether we should allow excluding other modules at build time. I'm not sure if this has been discussed before or would be considered useful.

I haven't reviewed the AC code, because I am not an expert there :)

As it turns out, I had made a silly mistake and left a copy & pasted chunk of code in there, so I'm glad you didn't review it as yet 🙂

A tip for reviewing: most of the configure.ac changes are making the libncurses checks conditional, and hence mostly just change indentation. If you review them ignoring whitespace the diff is much easier to read.

[github-actions]

This PR is stale because it has been open for 30 days with no activity.