BitchX requires either the terminfo or termcap terminal-handling library.
This is commonly provided by the ncurses library, so if you get the error:

Cannot find terminfo or termcap - try installing the ncurses-dev / ncurses-devel package.

..then you should try to find the ncurses development package for your OS.
Some examples of what this package may be called:

Debian, Ubuntu:	libncurses5-dev
Fedora, CentOS, OpenSuSE: ncurses-devel

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FreeBSD Clang causes BitchX to seg fault.  As a workaround, use gcc to
compile the client.