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n-riesco / ijavascript

IJavascript is a javascript kernel for the Jupyter notebook
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Tweak to installation documentation #91

Closed jonathaneunice closed 7 years ago

jonathaneunice commented 7 years ago

Just installed ijavascript. Running great. The install process, however, was not rapid or smooth. Would like to accelerate others' install efforts.

Problem On macOS (note: it's no longer called "OS X") I have Jupyter running for Python. Did npm i -g ijavascript. Seemed to install fine, but no joy. Running Jupyter (jupyter notebook) showed no JS kernel installed. There seemed to be no clear info on how to add ijavascript's Jupyter kernelspec. Dug around for many minutes. Finally noticed the ijs command mentioned. Tried it, worked great. Better yet, it installed the kernelspec. Now all subsequent Jupyter invocations are savvy to the JS kernel. Would like install instructions to be explicit about need to run ijs at least once, not just use normal Jupyter commands.

If you agree, happy to submit related pull request.

n-riesco commented 7 years ago

Thank you for the feedback. It does help me understand how users expect IJavascript to work.

And yes, I'm happy for you to submit a PR.

rgbkrk commented 7 years ago

Same here, I still find it odd I have to run ijs which is why I went the ijs-kernel route to make setting up the kernelspec easier. With the ijs setup, for me to get someone started in nteract or Hydrogen I tell them to:

  1. Install Jupyter
  2. npm install ijs
  3. run ijs
  4. close the tab for jupyter notebook
  5. stop the server
  6. kernel is now installed
n-riesco commented 7 years ago

Here goes a little bit on the history of ijs.

At the time IJavascript was first released, ijs was a simple wrapper around ipython notebook and thus it accepts all the flags ipython notebook accepts. Note that at that time (the time of profiles) the dashboard would only be able to launch one type of kernel. Later came Jupyter and the time of kernel specs. And to address the need for kernel specs, ijs added the flag --ijs-install=[local|global] (see usage).

This issue and Kyle's comment makes me think that I need to move the section on installing kernel specs to the main README.md and make the link to the usage documentation more visible.