Has anone seen or know of a CFFI wrapper for PDCurses?

[pjfarley3 at earthlink.net]

> From: Dan Stromberg <drsalists at gmail.com> 
> Sent: Monday, June 14, 2021 12:36 AM
> To: pjfarley3 at earthlink.net
> Cc: Python List <python-list at python.org>
> Subject: Re: Has anone seen or know of a CFFI wrapper for PDCurses?
>
> > On Sun, Jun 13, 2021 at 12:50 AM <mailto:pjfarley3 at earthlink.net> wrote:
> > Hi All,
> >
> > I have been investigating the possibility of wrapping the PDCurses DLL on
> > Windows (or even better the PDCursesMod fork) using cffi instead of ctypes. 
> > The unicurses project tried this using ctypes 11 years ago but unicurses
> > hasn't been worked on since 2010, and it shows its age.
>
> An option for your consideration: Maybe port Python's included curses module to PDCursesMod?

An interesting idea, to be sure, and one I have looked at to some extent.  One thing that I've never quite learned is whether the included curses and curses_panel modules statically link a copy of the ncurses library on *ix systems or whether they invoke the ncurses.so library dynamically.

If it is designed to invoke the ncurses and panels subroutines from the shared library it could be a possible path.

One obstacle I thought that I saw is that building cpython modules based on non-python library sources AssUMes that the build process can get the library source from the cpython repository, rather than from a non-python external source repository.  I have built some scripts to get around that assumption, but they would have to be integrated into the cpython external library build process for any wide distribution.

And there are some differences between the PDCurses and ncurses assumed internal structures and what is externalized and what is not that might make that harder than it first appears.

Plus taking that path really does requires the porter to learn at least the generics of the cpython internal macros and functions in order to be able to debug the result, which is a little bit daunting.  Not impossible, but many molehills look like mountains to the uninitiated.

Anyway, I am just investigating options at present, so thanks for the suggestion.

Peter