[pkg-wpa-devel] Bug#677993: Bug#677993: wpa_cli: Can no longer clear screen

[Stefan Lippers-Hollmann]

severity 677993 minor
thanks

On Tuesday 19 June 2012, Ben Armstrong wrote:
> Package: wpasupplicant
> Version: 1.0-2
> Severity: normal

I'm lowering the severity to minor, because in my opinion this doesn't 
impose a significant impact on wpa_cli's usability.

> wpa_cli output can get very verbose. As an aid to seeing only the
> changes to the output since I last looked, I am in the habit of using
> ctrl-L to clear the screen. However, ever since 1.0, ctrl-L no longer
> does this. Nor can I find a command in 'help' to clear the screen. I
> would like to be able to clear the screen again.

This is caused by switching wpa_cli to the new (since 1.0~) internal 
readline replacement, which might not have all the bells and whistles 
GNU readline has to offer, yet(?). You can confirm this by rebuilding 
wpa with this patch:

Index: debian/control
===================================================================
--- debian/control	(revision 1766)
+++ debian/control	(working copy)
@@ -16,6 +16,7 @@
  libnl-genl-3-dev (>= 3.2.3-2~) [linux-any],
  libpcap-dev [kfreebsd-any],
  libbsd-dev [kfreebsd-any],
+ libreadline-gplv2-dev,
  pkg-config,
  qt4-qmake,
  docbook-to-man,
Index: debian/config/wpasupplicant/linux
===================================================================
--- debian/config/wpasupplicant/linux	(revision 1766)
+++ debian/config/wpasupplicant/linux	(working copy)
@@ -237,11 +237,11 @@
 # When building a wpa_cli binary for distribution, please note that these
 # libraries are licensed under GPL and as such, BSD license may not apply for
 # the resulting binary.
-#CONFIG_READLINE=y
+CONFIG_READLINE=y
 
 # Include internal line edit mode in wpa_cli. This can be used as a replacement
 # for GNU Readline to provide limited command line editing and history support.
-CONFIG_WPA_CLI_EDIT=y
+#CONFIG_WPA_CLI_EDIT=y
 
 # Remove debugging code that is printing out debug message to stdout.
 # This can be used to reduce the size of the wpa_supplicant considerably
Index: debian/config/wpasupplicant/kfreebsd
===================================================================
--- debian/config/wpasupplicant/kfreebsd	(revision 1766)
+++ debian/config/wpasupplicant/kfreebsd	(working copy)
@@ -238,11 +238,11 @@
 # When building a wpa_cli binary for distribution, please note that these
 # libraries are licensed under GPL and as such, BSD license may not apply for
 # the resulting binary.
-#CONFIG_READLINE=y
+CONFIG_READLINE=y
 
 # Include internal line edit mode in wpa_cli. This can be used as a replacement
 # for GNU Readline to provide limited command line editing and history support.
-CONFIG_WPA_CLI_EDIT=y
+#CONFIG_WPA_CLI_EDIT=y
 
 # Remove debugging code that is printing out debug message to stdout.
 # This can be used to reduce the size of the wpa_supplicant considerably


So far this seems to be the only side effect of switching to 
WPA_CLI_EDIT (personally I didn't even notice that yet), and abandoning
readline usage is wanted for licensing reasons (especially looking at 
the wpa 2.x branch and readline6/ GPL-3). With a little luck, this 
feature may get added to future upstream versions, as there seems to be
some rudimentary ctrl-L handling already. In which case we'd consider 
backporting it to wpa - although likely not for wheezy. 

As we want/ need to avoid depending on GNU readline, I may tag this bug
as wontfix for the time being. Although I certainly hope that wpa_cli's
internal readline implementation gains feature parity with GNU 
readline in the externally visible regards.

Regards
	Stefan Lippers-Hollmann
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