How to detect whether my Go process is running in a headless environment?

Getting Help
1

I have a Go program which in case it can create a GUI it should, and if it can’t, it should just skip that part. Therefore, I want to know if the Go program is running in a headless environment (a GUI cannot be created). The GUI library that I use doesn’t throw an error but terminates the process (which is a different issue that I’ve already raised with the library).

So, what is the best way to detect whether my Go process is running in a headless environment?

(Because I already asked this question on a different platform, and got no response there, I have meanwhile created my own library for this at https://github.com/christianhujer/isheadless but maybe somebody has already implemented something like this, and in a better way.)

2

Well, you would need to know what operating system you are on first I think.

Couldn’t you perhaps just try to create a window? Presumably whatever GUI package you are using will give you an error if it can’t do it.

3

Yes the implementation of this is certainly OS specific. But knowing the operating system is exactly what I want to avoid in my own code and delegate to a library.

Just trying to create a window and catch the error is something that doesn’t work with the UI package that made me look into this in the first place. The UI package that I use (github.com/getlantern/systray) will terminate the process if its UI operation fails. That’s a separate issue, and I filed a bug for that UI package.

4

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