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Environment variables and exit status

Exit status

valerian exits 0 on success and 1 on any error, with the message on standard error and nothing written for the failed step. A usage error (an unknown option, a missing required argument) is reported by the argument parser and also exits non-zero. --help and --version exit 0. Piping the output of a command into head ends it quietly when head exits (older builds panicked with "Broken pipe"). A command stopped that way may not have written its output file.

Variables Valerian reads

Variable Read by Meaning Default
VALERIAN_CATALOGUE valerian solve, valerian photocal, valerian info Full path of the star catalogue (.vcat). It is the first place looked at when --catalogue is not given. See The star catalogue file. unset
VALERIAN_KEEP_LOCATION every valerian command Set to 1, true or yes to keep site coordinates, device serial numbers and unit identifiers in the headers of files written (the same as --keep-location). See FITS files. unset: they are dropped
VALERIAN_GUI_CONFIG valerian-gui Full path of the settings file (window size and recent files). %APPDATA%\valerian\gui.conf on Windows, else $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/valerian/gui.conf, else ~/.config/valerian/gui.conf

A missing or damaged settings file is not an error: the defaults apply and nothing is written until something changes.

Variables for tests and developers

Variable Meaning
VALERIAN_GPU_TESTS software or hardware: which adapter the GPU parity tests open.
VALERIAN_TEST_DATA, VALERIAN_TEST_OSC, VALERIAN_TEST_SOLVE Folders of real captures for the real-data tests; the tests skip when they are unset. The data is never committed. See the source repository.

Variables that belong to other software

Valerian reaches the graphics card through Vulkan (Windows: DirectX 12), so the Vulkan loader's own variables apply to it, for example VK_DRIVER_FILES to choose or hide a driver. Tutorial 11 uses it to show the fall-backs.