* Our ncurses package is built using configure option --with-termlib, which causes tgetent and friends to be put into the separate library libtinfo, not libncurses.
* The ancient texinfo 4.13 that is used by our autotools package (with comment "texinfo 5.x breaks building old versions of autotools...") does not know about libtinfo.

diff -r -u texinfo-4.13.orig/configure texinfo-4.13/configure
--- src.orig/texinfo-4.13/configure	2008-09-18 11:46:26.000000000 -0700
+++ src/texinfo-4.13/configure	2016-10-18 00:04:15.000000000 -0700
@@ -17477,7 +17477,7 @@
 # rather ncurses.  So we check for it.
 TERMLIBS=
 # Check for termlib before termcap because Solaris termcap needs libucb.
-TERMLIB_VARIANTS="ncurses curses termlib termcap terminfo"
+TERMLIB_VARIANTS="ncurses tinfo curses termlib termcap terminfo"
 for termlib in ${TERMLIB_VARIANTS}; do
   as_ac_Lib=`$as_echo "ac_cv_lib_${termlib}''_tgetent" | $as_tr_sh`
 { $as_echo "$as_me:$LINENO: checking for tgetent in -l${termlib}" >&5
