# Curses! Poll: which gem is most complete/bug-free/recent/maintained?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/curses-poll-which-gem-is-most-complete-bug-free-recent-maintained/181904>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [January 19, 2010, 11:30pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/curses-poll-which-gem-is-most-complete-bug-free-recent-maintained/181904 "2010-01-19T23:30:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![zettabyte](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/z/b19c9b/32.png) [@zettabyte](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/zettabyte)\
**Post date:** [January 19, 2010, 11:30pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/curses-poll-which-gem-is-most-complete-bug-free-recent-maintained/181904/1 "2010-01-19T23:30:10Z")

</div>

Hi everyone.

I’m wondering if anyone here uses the ncurses (or ruby-ncurses) gem or  
any other [n]curses gem(s). If so, I’m wondering if anyone can tell me  
which gem/project is the most recent/maintained/up-to-date?

I’ve got the “ncurses” (or rather “ncurses-ruby”) gem installed  
(version 0.9.1) via “sudo gem install ncurses” ([gems.rubyforge.org](http://gems.rubyforge.org)).  
However, the gem’s site ([http://ncurses-ruby.berlios.de/](http://ncurses-ruby.berlios.de/)) has a  
“Download area” link ([http://developer.berlios.de/project/](http://developer.berlios.de/project/)  
showfiles.php?group\_id=273) that references several newer versions, up  
to 1.2.4.

From this it looks like the gem I have is from August of 2004 while  
the latest version is from July 2009. Also from searching I found a  
“…RubyGem installation of Tobias Herzke’s ncurses-ruby…” (http://  
[GitHub - ELLIOTTCABLE/ncurses: ‹ᴜɴᴍᴀɪɴᴛᴀɪɴᴇᴅ› A Ruby module for accessing the ncurses library](http://github.com/elliottcable/ncurses)) on GitHub. Which version of the  
original ncurses-ruby this wraps I’m not sure.

Then there is the ffi-ncurses gem ([RubyGems.org | your community gem host](http://gems.rubyforge.org/gems/ffi-)  
ncurses) updated as recently as last February and the ncursesw gem  
([RubyGems.org | your community gem host](http://gems.rubyforge.org/gems/ncursesw)) with a version bump at the  
beginning of this month. The latter of the two appears to simply be a  
patched ncurses???

Then there is rbcurse ([http://rbcurse.rubyforge.org/](http://rbcurse.rubyforge.org/)) a gem that sits  
on top of ncurses-ruby to provide a “forms and widgets library.” This  
having been updated last November (and apparently testing it under  
ruby 1.9.1 is underway).

So, I’m interested in knowing what YOU use (if you do any coding with  
a curses or curses-like library) and why? What features/strengths do  
any of these offer over the ruby standard “curses” library? Which is  
most complete (wraps all of [n]curses functionality)? Which is most  
actively developed and maintained?

Thanks for any input!