Is it a requirement to have X installed to import wxPython.wx

Before I spend alot of time trying to figure out what's wrong I wanted
to ask...

Is it a requirement to have X installed and/or running to import
wxPython.wx?

You do have to have $DISPLAY set, and be able to connect to the X display
specified therein.

On a server box with no X and wxPythonGTK-py2.2-2.4.0.1-1

Well, you presumably have the necessary X *libraries* installed....

You don't need to have an X server running on the same machine, but
you do need to have one running -somewhere- for wx to connect-to.

At the interactive prompt I type:
>>import wxPython.wx

and python crashes and has this to say:
>Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:

Any .py file similarly dies.

Yep, that's what happens.

btw, one reason to run wx without X is that the server is cvs/build box
and runs pychecker, setup.py, epydoc and others that import files that
import wxPython.wx. But, it never actually runs them.

Been there....

I had pydoc running as a web-server, a while back, so that I could
keep a `more-than-up-to-date' reference for my libraries on my
web-site--so that people could get a general idea of what I was
working-on.

Well, one of my libraries used wxPython, so, when someone tried to
fetch the doc-page for it, my module loaded, imported wxPython...; wx
failed to connect to $DISPLAY and killed my server....

My solution was to run the pydoc-server in a loop, so that it'd
respawn when it died, but that's not an option if you really want it
to be able to do something useful for you wxPython-using modules....

Maybe you could just make wx happy by pointing $DISPLAY to an Xvfb process?

···

On Mon, Jan 20, 2003 at 08:06:29PM -0800, Norman J. Harman Jr. wrote:

--
"... I believe that learnability is a laudable goal, but frequently
misplaced. The purpose of a language is not to help you learn the
language, but to help you learn *other* things by using the language."
--Larry Wall

Joshua Judson Rosen wrote:

Maybe you could just make wx happy by pointing $DISPLAY to an Xvfb process?

Another solution for machines that don't have XVfb is to use the X server from VNC (Xvnc.) That has the added benefit that you can connect a vncviewer to it to check progress of automated test programs or whatever. See http://www.tightvnc.com/

···

--
Robin Dunn
Software Craftsman
http://wxPython.org Java give you jitters? Relax with wxPython!