Re: [Matplotlib-users] Failure to build due to missing X?

[John H. <jd...@gm...>]

On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 11:18 AM, John R. Cary <ca...@tx...> wrote:
> $ python setup.py install --prefix=/d/facets/contrib
> ============================================================================
> BUILDING MATPLOTLIB
>            matplotlib: 0.98.5
>                python: 2.5.2 (r252:60911, Dec 15 2008, 17:11:36)  [GCC
>                        3.4.6 20060404 (Red Hat 3.4.6-10)]
>              platform: linux2
>
> REQUIRED DEPENDENCIES
>                 numpy: 1.2.1.1
>             freetype2: 9.7.3
>
> OPTIONAL BACKEND DEPENDENCIES
>                libpng: 1.2.7
> connect 173.8.244.121 port 6000: Connection timed out
> X connection to foo.bar.com:12.0 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown).
>
> Is this expected?  Any way around?
>
> Thanks......John Cary

It is not expected in that I do not know why the connection was broken
(did it once exits, do you expect X connectivity in your build
environment?).  I am not sure why the X connection was broken, whether
you wanted it, or whether you wanted it to persist.  mpl can be built
w/o an X connection, but not all of the mpl backends can.  Details on
all of the mpl backends can be found here:

http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/faq/installing_faq.html#backends

A plain vanilla mpl install which can generate PS, PDF, SVG and PNG
should be buildable w/o an X connection.  You can copy the
setup.cfg.template file which lives alongside setup.py to setup.cfg
and edit it to turn off optional GUI backend building.

But if you want an mpl install that works with one or more GUIs, you
may need an X connnection.  That is because mpl tries to import one or
more GUI toolkits at build time to see if they are present as part of
an auto-configure routine.  If they are present, we try and build our
extensions for them.  So, for example, when we try and import pygtk to
see if we should build our gtk extensions, an X connection is made.
You might be able to work around this by explicitly stating in
setup.cfg which backends you want to build, turning off all
non-essential ones.

JDH