FindCurses

Finds the curses or ncurses library:

find_package(Curses [...])

Curses is a terminal control library for Unix-like systems, used to build text user interface (TUI) applications. Originally developed in 1978, it has since evolved into multiple implementations, most notably ncurses (new curses), BSD curses, and PDCurses (a public domain curses library for non-Unix platforms).

Result Variables

This module defines the following variables:

Curses_FOUND

Added in version 3.3.

Boolean indicating whether Curses was found.

CURSES_INCLUDE_DIRS

Added in version 3.1.

The include directories needed to use Curses.

CURSES_LIBRARIES

The libraries needed to use Curses.

CURSES_CFLAGS

Added in version 3.16.

Compiler flags which ought be given to C/C++ compilers when using Curses.

CURSES_HAVE_CURSES_H

Boolean indicating whether curses.h is available.

CURSES_HAVE_NCURSES_H

Boolean indicating whether ncurses.h is available.

CURSES_HAVE_NCURSES_NCURSES_H

Boolean indicating whether ncurses/ncurses.h is available.

CURSES_HAVE_NCURSES_CURSES_H

Boolean indicating whether ncurses/curses.h is available.

Hints

This module accepts the following variables:

CURSES_NEED_NCURSES

Set this variable to TRUE before calling find_package(Curses) if the ncurses implementation functionality is specifically required.

CURSES_NEED_WIDE

Added in version 3.10.

Set this variable to TRUE before calling find_package(Curses) if Unicode (wide character) support is required.

Deprecated Variables

The following variables are provided for backward compatibility:

CURSES_FOUND

Deprecated since version 4.2: Use Curses_FOUND, which has the same value.

Boolean indicating whether Curses was found.

CURSES_INCLUDE_DIR

Deprecated since version 3.1: Use the CURSES_INCLUDE_DIRS variable instead.

Path to a Curses include directory.

CURSES_LIBRARY

Deprecated since version 2.4: Use the CURSES_LIBRARIES variable instead.

Path to Curses library.

Examples

Finding Curses and creating an imported interface target for linking it to a project target:

find_package(Curses)
if(Curses_FOUND AND NOT TARGET Curses::Curses)
  add_library(Curses::Curses INTERFACE IMPORTED)
  set_target_properties(
    Curses::Curses
    PROPERTIES
      INTERFACE_LINK_LIBRARIES "${CURSES_LIBRARIES}"
      INTERFACE_INCLUDE_DIRECTORIES "${CURSES_INCLUDE_DIRS}"
  )
endif()

add_executable(app app.c)
target_link_libraries(app PRIVATE Curses::Curses)

When ncurses is specifically required:

set(CURSES_NEED_NCURSES TRUE)
find_package(Curses)