What is installed by default with Binder?

Binder
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You’ll want to peruse repo2docker codebase. For example, if you only provide a requirements.txt, you’ll get

  • (old) nodejs, less and unzip from apt
  • python 3.7 installed with python which resolves to this conda-lock-compatible list of packages
    • this includes
      • jupyterlab_widgets (which provides @jupyter-widgets/*)
      • jupyterlab-offline-notebook (which provides its eponymous package)

Once you start asking for r, julia, etc. it gets… more complicated, with some packages installed from… all over. r, in particular, causes a cascading download of rstudio and a bunch of other stuff.

As of JupyterLab 3.0, there is no specific jupyterlab handling performed, as everything is handled by the pre-built extensions installed by conda (or by your requirements.txt).

From a performance perspective, you should make every effort not to use “source” extensions via jupyter lab build or jupyter labextension install in postBuild, as this will usually a) increase your build time substantially and b) reduce the reproducibility. Of course, if you have extensions you need that haven’t updated, you’ll still have to take the hit, and download 1gb+ of node_modules, run webpack, etc. then have binder push all of that trash to the various nodes.

However, if you/your users don’t use/like the giant text labels added to the notebook toolbar by jupyterlab-offline-notebook it’s “safe” (won’t invoke npm/webpack) to do jupyter labextension disable jupyterlab-offline-notebook.

Additionally, to enable jupyterlab 3.1’s collaborative features, you’ll have to do a little bit of extra work:

  • in requirements.txt, specify jupyterlab >=3.1 (or a specific version)
    • probably install jupyterlab-link-share to avoid having to root around for your token
  • in jupyter_config.json specify {"LabApp": {"collaborative": true}}
    • using this file (instead of jupyter_notebook_config.json and/or jupyter_server_config.json) avoids having to think too much about launching jupyter notebook (the default) vs jupyter lab or jupyter server

For a more concrete example, see this gist (and just not use rc2).

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