[IPython-dev] Best practice of deployment for university courses

[Ozan Çağlayan]

Hello all,

Thanks for your fast replies :)

I am aware of the Jess' mechanism but it was too over-engineered for
us as we only have a quite outdated dual cpu Xeon server. So that's
why I didn't choose to use docker based deployment. I am also aware of
nbgrader but grading is currently a future task as I am just trying to
setup a working environment.

I installed a symbolic link to a system folder containing a git
checkout of some scientific python lecture into ~/notebooks to see
what happens. It was nice to see that a read-only file is detected and
even represented with an icon in the web interface :) A read-only
notebook also allows changing and running cells which maybe sufficient
for a live lab session to teach a programming language for example.
But once the user clicks "make a copy" the interface doesn't ask where
to create a copy and tries creating it in the same read-only folder
which fails. I really want to create a global repository of notebooks
for being able to for example do a "git pull" in that folder and get
latest versions of course materials and students will find the
up-to-date versions once they click refresh on the web interface.

Installing a startup notebook for telling people how to use stuff is
also a good idea.

I'll continue to explore and experiment :)