[IPython-dev] Discovering kernels/profiles

Thomas Kluyver takowl at gmail.com
Sat Nov 9 16:49:52 EST 2013


I'm starting to think about how newly installed kernels can be discovered
by IPython, and the links between kernels and profiles.

At the moment, the way to use a non-default kernel (such as IJulia) is to
specify its arguments in a config value. As a shortcut, you can create a
profile with this setting, and then launch IPython using that profile (e.g.
--profile=julia). However, we'd like to make it possible to start different
kernels from one notebook server (and presumably from one Qt console). When
a kernel is installed, there should be a simple way for it to tell IPython
of its existence, and how to start it.

A profile is a collection of settings, along with its own command history.
There may well be more than one profile for a given kernel - e.g. we ship a
few Python profiles that load different libraries on startup. In some
cases, it may also make sense to have more than one kernel per profile: the
default profile is currently used for both Python 3 and Python 2. In most
cases, however, it probably makes sense for each profile to be associated
with one kernel.

So, I propose:
- On installation, kernels should place a small json file in a specific
directory. There will be a per-user directory (e.g. ~/.ipython/kernels) and
a systemwide one (e.g. /usr/share/ipython/kernels)
- IPython will offer a mechanism to open a notebook (or run kernels by
other means) with a specific profile
- The list of 'profiles' will include the names of kernels that don't yet
have a matching profile. When one of these is selected, a matching profile
will be created - so the first time you use the Haskell kernel, say, a
profile_haskell profile folder is made.
- The profiles can specify a kernel definition file, instead of including
kernel details directly in config. This allows the kernel definition to be
updated later, if e.g. command line arguments change.

Does this sound sensible?

Then there's the question of how to handle multiple kernels sharing a
profile. We could allow a general mechanism for this, or special case the
Python 2/3 kernels, or just drop the possibility and force the Python
kernels to use separate profiles.

Thanks,
Thomas
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