--with-shared: This enables the build of the shared ncurses library files. chmod 755 *.5.2: Shared libraries should be executable. Ncurses's install routine doesn't set the permissions properly so we do it manually instead. ln -sf libncurses.a libcurses.a: Some programs try to link using -lcurses instead of -lncurses. This symlink ensures that such programs will link without errors.