ncurses 6.1 adds extended color functions to support terminals with 256 colors (e.g. xterm-256color). The extended functions take color pair values that are signed integers because the existing functions only take signed 16-bit values.

My goal with this issue is to transparently use the ncurses extended color functions when compiling with ncurses 6.1 or newer. This should be straightforward and transparent to curses module users because the short int restrictions are in the ncurses library and not in the curses module API.

This will fix the problems observed in issue #36630 but is broader, which is why I created a separete issue. I will work on this and post a PR whit it is ready.

A new function called curses.has_extended_color_support() will indicate whether the linked ncurses library provides extended color support. It returns true if curses.h defines NCURSES_EXT_COLORS and NCURSES_EXT_FUNCS, indicating that the extended color functions are available. This seems more useful to developers than using an indirect method like trying to set a color-pair greater than 0x7fff and checking for an exception to indicate lack of support.

At first glance, has_extended_color() seems like a better name because it is similar to has_colors(), but the two functions have very different semantics that could confuse developers. has_extended_color_support() indicates available functionality in the underlying ncurses library that is set when the interpreter is compiled and linked, while has_curses() indicates available functionality of the current terminal at run-time.

Corrected typos in msg343336 for clarity:

At first glance, has_extended_colors() seems like a better name because it is similar to has_colors(), but the two functions have very different semantics that could confuse developers. has_extended_color_support() indicates available functionality in the underlying ncurses library that is set when the interpreter is compiled and linked, while has_colors() indicates available functionality of the current terminal at run-time. The name has_extended_colors() would imply that it indicates run-time terminal functionality and not static library functionality.

PR 17536 was based on the original PR 13534 and has now gone through a couple of rounds of code review. Other than a missing doc change, everything in PR 13534 is covered (and updated) in PR 17536 so I've closed the original PR.  Other than adding the doc change and a final core developer review of the last requested changes, this *should* be good to go.

We really need to get this merged since, without it, Python builds fail with the newer versions of ncurses now in most distributions.  Once it is merged into master for 3.10, Łukasz can provide direction about whether and when it should be backported to 3.9 and/or 3.8.

New changeset da4e09fff6b483fe858997da5599c25397107ca1 by Hans Petter Jansson in branch 'master':
bpo-36982: Add support for extended color functions in ncurses 6.1 (GH-17536)
https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/da4e09fff6b483fe858997da5599c25397107ca1

> We really need to get this merged since, without it, Python builds fail with the newer versions of ncurses now in most distributions.

That is a bit of an overstatment on my part. What is true is that test_curses fails on 3.9 and 3.8 when run with ncurses 6.1+.  It is also true that the relevant parts of test_curses are often skipped in CI and buildbot runs as described in Issue12669 so a test failure is often not seen.

> Łukasz can provide direction about whether and when it should be backported to 3.9 and/or 3.8.

We discussed this and decided that a backport to 3.8 was out-of-scope but a backport in time for 3.9.0 might be OK.  Alas, I had forgotten that other changes have gone into master for 3.10 prior to this merge which complicates a backport to 3.9, enough that we shouldn't be trying to throw this in just prior to 3.9.0rc1.

Thanks everyone for the work on this!