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Add instructions for headless docs build on Wayland #781

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164f06f
Add instructions for headless docs build on Wayland
melissawm Jul 13, 2025
8761b1f
Merge branch 'main' into headless-wayland
melissawm Jul 13, 2025
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5 changes: 5 additions & 0 deletions Makefile
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Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -40,9 +40,14 @@ prep-stubs:
docs-build: prep-docs
NAPARI_CONFIG="" NAPARI_APPLICATION_IPY_INTERACTIVE=0 sphinx-build -M html docs/ docs/_build -WT --keep-going -D sphinx_gallery_conf.examples_dirs=$(GALLERY_PATH) $(SPHINXOPTS)

# build docs with xvfb (headless X server)
docs-xvfb: prep-docs
NAPARI_CONFIG="" NAPARI_APPLICATION_IPY_INTERACTIVE=0 xvfb-run --auto-servernum sphinx-build -M html docs/ docs/_build -D sphinx_gallery_conf.examples_dirs=$(GALLERY_PATH) $(SPHINXOPTS)

# build docs with xwfb (headless X server with Wayland support)
docs-xwfb: prep-docs
NAPARI_CONFIG="" NAPARI_APPLICATION_IPY_INTERACTIVE=0 xwfb-run -- sphinx-build -M html docs/ docs/_build -D sphinx_gallery_conf.examples_dirs=$(GALLERY_PATH) $(SPHINXOPTS)

# full docs (re)build
# cleans everything, starts from scratch
html: clean clean-gallery docs-build
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40 changes: 31 additions & 9 deletions docs/developers/contributing/documentation/index.md
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Expand Up @@ -452,17 +452,39 @@ Note: using `-j4` will parallelize the build over 4 cores and can result in cras

````

````{tip}
If you have [xvfb](https://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.6/doc/man/man1/Xvfb.1.xhtml)
installed on your system, you can also run a "headless GUI" build by using the
`docs-xvfb` command:
````{admonition} Headless GUI builds
:class: tip

```bash
make docs-xvfb
```
If you are running a full build, you can run it in a "headless GUI"
mode, which will prevent napari windows from popping up during the build.

1. If you are using X11 as your display server and you have
[xvfb](https://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.6/doc/man/man1/Xvfb.1.xhtml)
installed on your system, you can use the `docs-xvfb` command:

```bash
make docs-xvfb
```

This will prevent all but the first napari window from being shown during the docs
build.

2. If you are using Wayland as your display server, and you have `xwfb-run` installed
on your system (part of the [xwayland-run utilities](https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/ofourdan/xwayland-runcan),
you can use the `docs-xwfb` command:

```bash
make docs-xwfb
```

Note that you may have to install the `xwayland-run` package manually so that it
uses the correct Python environment you are using to build the docs. You can do that
by cloning the sources from [the xwayland-run GitLab repository](https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/ofourdan/xwayland-run) and running:

This will prevent all but the first napari window from being shown during the docs
build.
```bash
meson setup -Dcompositor=weston --prefix=/path/to/env/ -Dpython.install_env=prefix . build
meson install -C build
```
````

(building-what-you-need)=
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