[Paraview] ParaView Environment Variables

[Cory Quammen]

Hi Bill,

This is a good project. Perhaps we can include a version of your man page
in the user's guide when it is finished?

I know about some of these environment variables:

- PARAVIEW_DATA_ROOT - used to point ParaView to a testing data repository.
This is really only used when ParaView's tests are run and likely isn't
useful to users.

- PV_NO_OFFSCREEN_SCREENSHOTS - just what it sounds like. If set, offscreen
rendering will not be used for generating screenshots, even if the ParaView
settings say that offscreen rendering should be used for generating
screenshots.

- VTK_AUTOLOAD_PATH - users shouldn't need to set this. From the
vtkObjectFactory documentation: "The first time CreateInstance is called,
all dll's or shared libraries in the environment variable VTK_AUTOLOAD_PATH
are loaded into the current process."

- VTK_RENDERER - this looks like a historical way to choose which render
window to instantiate. It doesn't look like it is used anymore.

- PV_DEBUG_LEAKS_VIEW - enables a window that shows the number of instances
of all VTK classes. Useful for debugging, not really useful for users.

-PV_DEBUG_TEST - I don't see this in the ParaView source anywhere

- PV_SETTINGS_DEBUG - turns on debugging message related to loading
ParaView's settings files, e.g., where it looked for the settings file.

- PV_PLUGIN_DEBUG - print debugging output having to do with where ParaView
looks for plugins.

- PV_PLUGIN_PATH - adds search path for plugins

- VTK_MATPLOTLIB_DEBUG - Enable verbose debugging output during
initialization of matplotlib.

Hope that helps,
Cory

On Thu, Oct 15, 2015 at 4:58 PM, Bill Sherman <shermanw at indiana.edu> wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> Perhaps an odd question -- I'm wondering what important environment
> variables are associated with ParaView, and in some cases what they
> do.
>
> I ask because for an installation of ParaView on an HPC system, I
> am creating a traditional man-page.  And one of the traditional
> sections of man pages for applications is "ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES".
>
> I happened to find that NERSC had previously done a similar thing,
> but based on the command line arguments as well as the environment
> variables it gives no longer in existence, it would seem that this
> is from a rather old version of ParaView, so I'm basically starting
> from scratch.
>
> Searching through the source for "getenv", I found several refernces
> to environment variables, and I'd like to get advice on what should/
> should not be included.
>
> So there are a couple of categories the environment variables can
> be classified as.
>
> 1) ParaView specific variables:
>         - PV_ICET_WINDOW_BORDERS
>         - PARAVIEW_DATA_ROOT
>         - PV_NO_OFFSCREEN_SCREENSHOTS
>
> So I know what the first of those does, and I had an assumption of
> what the second one (PARAVIEW_DATA_ROOT) does -- but I couldn't find
> a way to make it have an effect!  And I can half-guess what the third
> one does -- explanations welcome.
>
>
> 2) VTK related variables:
>         - VTK_AUTOLOAD_PATH
>         - VTK_RENDERER
>
> And I don't really know what either of them do.
>
>
> 3) Generic environment variables that ParaView accesses:
>         - DISPLAY
>         - HOME
>         - HOSTNAME
>         - LOGNAME
>         - PATH
>         - LD_LIBRARY_PATH
>         - PWD (VTK/Utilities/KWSys/vtksys/SystemTools.cxx)
>         - PYTHONPATH
>         - TCL_LIBRARY (vtkTclUtil.cxx)
>         - TK_LIBRARY (vtkTclUtil.cxx)
>         - R_HOME (vtkRInterface.cxx)
>         - COLUMNS (VTK/Utilities/KWSys/vtksys/SystemTools.cxx)
>         - APPDATA -- for MS-Windows only?
>         - COMMON_APPDATA -- for MS-Windows only?
>
> So I don't know that I'd need to include those as part of a ParaView
> man-page.
>
>
> 4) Other variables that are probably just for internal testing:
>         - PV_DEBUG_LEAKS_VIEW
>         - PV_DEBUG_TEST
>         - PV_SETTINGS_DEBUG
>         - PV_PLUGIN_DEBUG
>         - PV_PLUGIN_PATH
>         - DASHBOARD_TEST_FROM_CTEST
>         - DART_TEST_FROM_DART
>         - VERBOSE_TESTING (Exodus)
>         - VERY_VERBOSE_TESTING (Exodus)
>         - FLIP_CAM_MANIP (Interactor Style Unicam)
>         - VTK_MATPLOTLIB_DEBUG (vtkMatplotlibMathTextUtilities.cxx)
>         - QT_MAC_NO_NATIVE_MENUBAR
> (ThirdParty/QtTesting/vtkqttesting/pqTestUtility.cxx)
>
> Again, probably wouldn't include these in a man-page, unless they are
> something the end-user could possibly want to affect.
>
>
> Happy to share the man-page when I'm done.
>
>         Thanks,
>         Bill
>
> --
> Bill Sherman
> Sr. Technology Advisor
> Advanced Visualization Lab
> Pervasive Technology Inst
> Indiana University
> shermanw at indiana.edu
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-- 
Cory Quammen
R&D Engineer
Kitware, Inc.
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