After a few days tinkering with why set_menu_items() would some times segfault when using an intermediate std::vector to add new entries to the menu, I got fed up with Ncurses and decided to try termbox instead.

With termbox, the terminal is just a big pixel canvas. You use tb_change_cell() to alter a single character on it, and then print the changes out with tb_present(). Making a simple menu wasn't as troublesome as I thought it would be. As it looks now, I'll keep using it. Hopefully it's portable enough.

Here is an aciinema of the initial menu implementation in action: https://asciinema.org/a/wTiIdEBvd58x4hX9adk9rTaii

Entries prefixed with '2' is from a second Python source script (and thus thread).