GR plots are opened when building documentation

[schillic]

Details

Since v1.41.2, in a Documenter run with plots, a window opens and shows the plot, just like when you use Plots in a REPL normally. Previously, such a window was not opened (and I think that was a useful behavior). This behavior did not occur in v1.41.1. I think this commit is responsible, as it set display to true by default.

Possibly a duplicate of #5202.

Backends

This bug occurs on

Backend	yes	no	untested
gr (default)	x
unicodeplots			x
pythonplot			x
pgfplotsx			x
plotlyjs			x
plotly			x
gaston			x

Versions

Plots.jl version: v1.41.2
Backend version (]st -m <backend(s)>): GR v0.73.19
Output of versioninfo():

Julia Version 1.12.2
Commit ca9b6662be4 (2025-11-20 16:25 UTC)
Build Info:
  Official https://julialang.org release
Platform Info:
  OS: Linux (x86_64-linux-gnu)
  CPU: 4 × Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-5200U CPU @ 2.20GHz
  WORD_SIZE: 64
  LLVM: libLLVM-18.1.7 (ORCJIT, broadwell)
  GC: Built with stock GC
Threads: 1 default, 1 interactive, 1 GC (on 4 virtual cores)
Environment:
  LD_PRELOAD = /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6
  JULIA_PKG_PRECOMPILE_AUTO = 0
  LD_LIBRARY_PATH = :/usr/lib64
  JULIA_EDITOR = kwrite

x-ref: JuliaDocs/Documenter.jl#2851

[asinghvi17]

@jheinen would it be reasonable to make display default to false there?

[jheinen]

The change resulted from this requirement. Among other things, there was a desire for interactive output when creating a sequence of PNGs (for video creation). For some users, it is therefore more of a feature than a bug.

In any case, creating such image sequences is an order of magnitude faster with this patch, as the GR internal graphics subsystem (GKS) does not always have to be completely reset.

You can prevent this output with ENV["GKSwstype"] = "100", e.g., for testing or creating documentation. Does that help?

[asinghvi17]

I guess we could wrap Documenter usage in withenv("GKSwstype" => "100") do ... end. But yeah, if it's a performance improvement it seems reasonable not to drop it.

[schillic]

Alright, thanks for the reply. Good that there is a simple workaround. I just verified it.
From my side, this issue can be closed, but maybe somebody wants to add this note to the documentation or apply @asinghvi17's suggestion...