Building CLI without xcb

[ghweber]

Hi,

I have been able to successfully build a server component only build on NERSC Perlmutter that can be used as a backend for the UI running on a user's workstation. However, it is useful to have the CLI working as well. Is there a path top build that without the need of having X11/xcb libraries installed. xcb seems to be mainly used for getting window metrics and that use case would be purely offscreen rendering. Or how have others installed VisIt at HPC centers where these libraries were missing. (I did a Spack based install with Eric Brugger's help a while back but going the build_visit route was easier after all, at least for getting the server components run reliably.)

[brugger1]

Hi Gunther,

To the best of my knowledge, we have always had to have the X11/xcb libraries installed when using build_visit to build all of VisIt. Without those, spack is the only option I'm aware of. You did mention an interesting path forward though and that would be adding a CLI only mode (Build the server components and the CLI). I believe it would still need the viewer since the CLI communicates with the viewer, but the viewer could possibly be built without those libraries.

Eric