PDCurses gives curses programs a console on platforms termcap cannot describe

One API, five very different consoles

PDCurses is described as a public domain curses library for environments that do not fit the termcap and terminfo model, and the portability list is the whole point: DOS, OS/2, the Windows console, X11 and SDL. It implements most of the functions available in X/Open and System V R4 curses, and it supports a variety of compilers for these platforms. The reason a library like this exists is that termcap and terminfo describe a terminal's capabilities through a database of escape sequences, and that model was built around Unix serial terminals. A Windows console, a DOS text mode and an X11 window are not terminals in that sense, so a curses program written for Unix either does not compile there or needs a different rendering model. PDCurses supplies that model behind the familiar function names.

The X11 and SDL ports turn a text program into a GUI

The README states the most unusual property of the library directly: the X11 and SDL ports let you recompile existing text-mode curses programs to produce GUI applications. That is a different claim from porting, and it is the one that makes PDCurses interesting beyond retro computing. A program written against the curses API draws characters to a virtual screen with attributes, and PDCurses renders that screen as a window with a font rather than as character cells in a terminal. The trade is that you get a window that looks like a terminal rather than a real widget toolkit, so the result is limited by what the curses drawing primitives can express.

Public domain for the core, with exceptions in the extras

The legal section is worth reading carefully because the answer is not uniform. The core package and most ports are in the public domain, but a few files in the demos directory and in the X11 directory are subject to copyright under licences described in those directories. So the license of the library you link against is public domain, and the licence of the extra material is not, and the distinction matters if you are redistributing a binary that includes a demo. The software is provided as is with no warranty whatsoever, which is the customary disclaimer for software of this vintage and also a fair description of what you are getting: a compatibility library maintained by one person.

The layout is one directory per port

The repository top level maps directly onto the portability story. There is a `common/` directory holding the code shared across ports, and then a directory per target: `dos/`, `os2/`, `wincon/` for the Windows console, `sdl1/`, `sdl2/` and `x11/`. Each of those carries its own README with a distribution status section, which is where the per-directory licence exceptions are described. The public headers are at the top level, with `curses.h` as the API surface, `panel.h` for the panel extension and `curspriv.h` for the internals. The `demos/` directory holds the example programs, and the `pdcurses/` directory is the library itself in its packaged form. The `docs/` directory holds the main documentation and the change history, and the README notes that the main documentation is now in that directory rather than in the README itself.

Stable release from 2019, development continues on the branch

The version story is explicit. The stable release is v3.9, dated 2019-09-04, with the current development work to be found in the git repository. The release history before that is v3.8 from 2019-02-02 and v3.7 from 2018-12-31. So the pattern is the same one a lot of infrastructure libraries follow: a stable tag that people pin to, and a moving default branch. The last push to the master branch was on 2026-09-20, which is a long way after the last tag, so the master branch has years of accumulated work in it. The project is distributed mainly as source code, though some pre-compiled libraries may be available, and the canonical download location is the pdcurses.org site with a SourceForge page and a GitHub page also linked. The maintainer is William McBrine, and the documentation points to a docs directory README for the substantive material.

Where the limits are

Three limits are visible from the documentation. First, the compatibility target is X/Open and System V R4 curses, implemented in most but not necessarily all of it, so a program relying on the rarer extensions may not port cleanly. Second, the graphical ports give you a window, not a widget toolkit, so the ceiling on what a ported program can look like is the curses drawing model rather than the platform. Third, the SDL and X11 backends mean the library depends on those libraries being present, which is a heavier dependency footprint than a console-only build, and the DOS and OS/2 ports have their own constraints. The practical way to evaluate it is to read the distribution status notes in the directory for the port you care about, because they state what works on that platform, and the documentation directory is where the change history lives if you need to know what changed since the tag you would install.

Editorial conclusion

Adopt PDCurses if you are porting a curses program to Windows, DOS or OS/2 and want the same API rather than a Windows console rewrite, since the point of the library is that the source barely changes. Do not adopt it for a new Linux terminal application, where ncurses is the usual choice and PDCurses is a compatibility layer. Verify first which port you need, since the Windows console and the X11 and SDL ports behave differently, and read the distribution status notes because a few files in the demos and X11 directories carry their own licences.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. Project website
3. README
4. Releases
5. wmcbrine/PDCurses on GitHub