[Debian-science-sagemath] jupyter-notebook/widgets (was: 7.4 with the latest shiny new packages: 4000 failed tests)

[Gordon Ball]

In-Reply-To: <6fc983ec-b6fd-cffa-feb2-fedc2ab21ad5 at rezozer.net>

Tobias asked me to forward this discussion, concerning packaging of
jupyter-notebook, ipywidgets and widgetsnbextension.

On 06/11/16 11:32, Tobias Hansen wrote:
> Hi Gordon,
>
> I don't know if you are subscribed to the sagemath packaging list.

I'm not. Perhaps in light of the common issues I should be.
>
> In the light of these two messages:
>
>
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debian-science-sagemath/Week-of-Mon-20161031/000350.html
>
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debian-science-sagemath/Week-of-Mon-20161031/000352.html
>
> and since we don't have so much more time to the freeze, I wanted to ask
> you to clarify if you are working on these two packages.

I have looked at this, yes.

 * ipywidgets is easy (simple python package with no messy dependencies
or dfsg issues, like jupyter-console), but this is just the python side
- and isn't very useful without...
 * widgetsnbextension - the server-side and javascript part, which is
going to be more difficult:

The current stable (5.2.2) has several unpackaged js dependencies:

 * d3-format
 * scriptjs
 * webpack
 * (+ perhaps more of the package.json:devDependencies - many of which
tend to be unneeded but it's hard to know until trying

The current beta (6.0.0b2) adds even more (phosphor), which is also
likely to be a dependency of notebook >= 5, so we'll have to deal with
it eventually.

So, it *might* be doable, but it's going to be difficult to make it by
the stretch freeze date.

How important are they for sage?

>
> And did you find any new insights about jupyter-notebook?

I have spent quite a few hours trying to work out why it doesn't work
with jquery-ui-1.12, without success. It isn't due to the debian
packaging of jqueryui (same issues just updating the npm package and
trying to rebuild). Nothing in the migration guide for 1.10 -> 1.11 or
1.11 -> 1.12 obviously seems to be a reason, but I think it is something
to do with the way jupyter handles module loading.

Unfortunately I don't have a deep enough knowledge of requirejs and
other hacks needed for big javascript projects to know how to dissect this.

Can we get away with embedding the sources for jquery-ui-1.10? That
would certainly be the quickest way forward.

>
> Best,
> Tobias
>