Recursive delete directories in file browser?

JupyterLab
1

Is there a way to enable recursive deletion of a directory in the file browser? Currently, if a user clicks delete on a non-empty folder, they get an error that the folder is not empty.

Yes, I know this matches the behavior of command-line shell tools like rm or rmdir, but I have yet to see another GUI interface that presents users with this same design. Is it possible to change this behavior? Iā€™d very much love to be able to teach my students from JupyterLab as a first-class environment without suggesting they fall back on code-server, rstudio, or command-line.

2

I recall that this behaviour varies between file systems (and thus is different by default on Windows as compared to Linux). I think setting FileContentsManager.always_delete_dir to true in jupyter-server configuration might help you, but there are caveats. See Config file and command line options ā€” Jupyter Server documentation

3

thanks so much, this worked perfectly.

For reference, for my k8s setup I had to put this in singleuser section of values.yaml

singleuser:
   extraFiles:
     jupyter_server_config.json:
         mountPath: /usr/local/etc/jupyter/jupyter_server_config.json
         data:
            ContentsManager:
              allow_hidden: true
            FileContentsManager:
              always_delete_dir: true
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