Developer Install#

The core Jupyter Widgets packages are developed in the jupyter-widgets/ipywidgets git repository.

Prerequisites#

To install ipywidgets from git, you will need:

Installing With Conda#

conda create -c conda-forge -n ipywidgets yarn notebook jupyterlab
conda activate ipywidgets
ipython kernel install --name ipywidgets --display-name "ipywidgets" --sys-prefix
git clone https://github.com/jupyter-widgets/ipywidgets.git
cd ipywidgets
./dev-install.sh

Installing with pip#

To do an editable install of the python ipywidgets package into the user site directory with pip, please navigate into the sub-folder python/ipywidgets with

cd python/ipywidgets

and run

pip install --prefix=$(python -m site --user-base) -e .

Using pip install --user -e . will not work due to a bug in pip. See https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/7953 for more details.

Rebuilding after making changes#

To build and test changes, run the following commands in the ipywidgets repository root directory, empty your browser’s cache, and refresh the page.

    yarn clean
    yarn build

If your changes are confined to one package (for example, just in the widgetsnbextension package), then it may be sufficient to just run yarn build in that specific directory.

Tips and troubleshooting#

  • If you have any problems with the above install procedure, make sure that permissions on npm and pip related install directories are correct.

  • Sometimes, it helps to clear cached files too by running git clean -dfx from the root of the cloned repository.

  • When you make changes to the Javascript and you’re not seeing the changes, it could be your browser is caching aggressively. Try clearing the browser’s cache. Try also using “incognito” or “private” browsing tabs to avoid caching.

  • If troubleshooting an upgrade and its build, you may need to do the following process:

    • Deep clean of the cloned repository:

      git clean -dfx .
      
    • Remove anything with widgetsnbextension in the name of files within the conda directory

    • Try reinstalling ipywidgets

Updating widget model specification#

To update the widget model specification with changes, do something like this in the repo root:

python ./packages/schema/generate-spec.py -f json-pretty packages/schema/jupyterwidgetmodels.latest.json
python ./packages/schema/generate-spec.py -f markdown packages/schema/jupyterwidgetmodels.latest.md

Releasing new versions#

See dev_release.md for a details on how to release new versions of ipywidgets to PyPI and jupyter-widgets-controls on npm.

Testing#

See dev_testing.md for a details on how to run Python and Javascript tests.

Building documentation#

See dev_docs.md for a details on how to build the docs.