Wine cannot find the ncurses library (libncurses.so.5).

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

> lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu precise (development branch)
Release: 12.04

> apt-cache policy wine1.4
wine1.4:
  Installed: 1.4~rc4-0ubuntu2
  Candidate: 1.4~rc4-0ubuntu2
  Version table:
 *** 1.4~rc4-0ubuntu2 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/universe amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

> dpkg -l | grep ncurses
ii libncurses5 5.9-4 shared libraries for terminal handling
ii libncurses5-dev 5.9-4 developer's libraries for ncurses
ii libncursesw5 5.9-4 shared libraries for terminal handling (wide character support)
ii mtr-tiny 0.80-1ubuntu1 Full screen ncurses traceroute tool
ii ncurses-base 5.9-4 basic terminal type definitions
ii ncurses-bin 5.9-4 terminal-related programs and man pages

> uname -a
Linux T5246 3.2.0-17-generic #26-Ubuntu SMP Fri Feb 17 21:35:49 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Can you provide some context please? Where do you see this bug? What happens?

When I started windows program with wine, it says this

tux@S205:~/Lataukset$ wine program.exe
fixme:iphlpapi:NotifyAddrChange (Handle 0xebe8cc, overlapped 0xebe8b0): stub
wine: configuration in '/home/tux/.wine' has been updated.
Wine cannot find the ncurses library (libncurses.so.5).

Using wine on an amd64 system:

$ sudo apt-get install wine1.4
$ wine <snip>
Wine cannot find the ncurses library (libncurses.so.5)
$ sudo apt-get install libncurses5:i386
$ wine <snip>

Message gone.

It seems that wine1.4-amd64/wine1.4-i386 should depend on libncurses5. It was installed on my host architecture beforehand but when installing the other arch package (in this case i386) it does not get installed as a dependency.

This is what I guess this bug submitter and the one in lp:941565 was trying to report since everyone that has ran into this seems to be using an amd64 system and running the 32bit wine.

Ahh, than you micove that answers it perfectly.

I have put an explicit depends in the control field, however I feel like this bug shouldn't have to be solved in the Wine package itself.

The reason is that libncurses5 is a priority: required package, which means it should probably be installed along with any package of its arch.

This bug was fixed in the package wine1.4 - 1.4~rc6-0ubuntu1

---------------
wine1.4 (1.4~rc6-0ubuntu1) precise; urgency=low

  * New upstream release
    - Bug fixes only, we are in code freeze.
  * debian/control:
    - explicitly depend on libncurses5 (LP: #938310)
    - bump breaks/replaces to packages before rc6
 -- Scott Ritchie <email address hidden> Sun, 04 Mar 2012 19:51:50 -0800