Checking for X availability

[Flavio codeco coelho]

I have a program that uses pythondialog for its UI.

Pythondialog is a wrapper of the shell dialog and xdialog libs.

But I would like for it to switch between using Dialog ( when X is not
available ) and xdialog (when X is available)

So my question is: how can I check for the availability of X? i.e.,
How will my program know if its running in a text only console or in
console window over X?

thanks,

Flávio

 

[Nils Nordman]

So my question is: how can I check for the availability of X? i.e.,
How will my program know if its running in a text only console or in
console window over X?

Well, one way to do it is to check whether the environment variable
DISPLAY is set (which it is when running under X, and should not be
otherwise).

Cheers,

 

[Jeremy Bowers]

So my question is: how can I check for the availability of X? i.e., How
will my program know if its running in a text only console or in console
window over X?

The first thing that leaps to mind is... try it. If it fails, switch to
the other. Remember modules are just variables and can be re-assigned, if
needed.

try:
import xdialog as mydialog
except ImportError:
# user must not have it
import dialog as mydialog

try:
# do something with mydialog here
except YouDontHaveXError:
# tried to use xdialog, but it failed
import dialog as mydialog

etc.

That won't be useful, and I don't know what exception will be thrown when
X isn't found, but you should get something. This should be invisible to
the user, and is also the most transparent way to get it right; using
environment vars and such may not be the best way to do it.

This, by the way, was assuming that xdialog and dialog have identical
APIs. If that is not the case, I'd suggest "process-level recursion"; try
starting up with X, and if it fails, os.execl your process again with a
command line parameter to use console dialog. That will be somewhat
simpler than trying to detect it inside the program itself.

 

[Dan Stromberg]

I have a program that uses pythondialog for its UI.

Pythondialog is a wrapper of the shell dialog and xdialog libs.

But I would like for it to switch between using Dialog ( when X is not
available ) and xdialog (when X is available)

So my question is: how can I check for the availability of X? i.e.,
How will my program know if its running in a text only console or in
console window over X?

thanks,

Flávio

If there's interest, I could make available my "pdialog" module, which is
also a wrapper around *dialog, but uses X when available, and curses when
it is not.

 

[Cameron Laird]

Well, one way to do it is to check whether the environment variable
DISPLAY is set (which it is when running under X, and should not be
otherwise).

.
.
.
While there certainly are successful programs that use this
approach, it's NOT true in general--at least in the generality
I encounter. It can happen, for example, that a user withOUT
$DISPLAY in the environment launches

interesting_application -display SOME_DISPLAY ...

Jeremy Bowers gives excellent advice elsewhere in this thread:
try, and use exceptions to learn what's going on; as you learn
more, relaunch the application with a refined command-line.