[yocto] bitbake menuconfig fails

[Mircea Gliga]

Hello

We are using in our layer a kernel 4.8 recipe (linux-stable_4.8.bb)- 
everything ok.
I'm trying to upgrade to 4.14, I created a new recipe 
linux-stable_4.14.bb. They live side by side, for now.
But with the 4.14 kernel when running `bitbake -c menuconfig 
linux-stable`, the new terminal comes up and I get the following error:

   HOSTCC  scripts/basic/fixdep
   GEN     ./Makefile
   HOSTCC  scripts/kconfig/mconf.o
   HOSTCC  scripts/kconfig/zconf.tab.o
   HOSTCC  scripts/kconfig/lxdialog/checklist.o
   HOSTCC  scripts/kconfig/lxdialog/util.o
   HOSTCC  scripts/kconfig/lxdialog/inputbox.o
   HOSTCC  scripts/kconfig/lxdialog/textbox.o
   HOSTCC  scripts/kconfig/lxdialog/yesno.o
   HOSTCC  scripts/kconfig/lxdialog/menubox.o
   HOSTLD  scripts/kconfig/mconf
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lncursesw
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
scripts/Makefile.host:111: recipe for target 'scripts/kconfig/mconf' failed
make[3]: *** [scripts/kconfig/mconf] Error 1
/media/mircea/ExtLinux/Adventure/testBuildServer/product-sama5-kernel/yocto/build/tmp/work-shared/cuxe/kernel-source/Makefile:548: 
recipe for target 'menuconfig' failed
make[2]: *** [menuconfig] Error 2
Makefile:146: recipe for target 'sub-make' failed
make[1]: *** [sub-make] Error 2
Makefile:24: recipe for target '__sub-make' failed
make: *** [__sub-make] Error 2
Command failed.


If I rename linux-stable_4.14.bb to linux-stable_4.14.bb___, then run 
bitbake again (now the build system is working with the 4.8 kernel 
again) => menuconfig starts and works as expected.

I'm using krogoth, 2.1.2, Debian 8 (jessie)

I also tried to config the kernel outside of yocto, downloaded 
https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v4.x/linux-4.14.4.tar.xz, 
extracted and run make menuconfig => works as expected

Any hints are appreciated.

Thanks