Pre-release plan for Notebook v7

[Zsailer]

This describes the shortest path to get out a pre-release of Notebook v7 (currently called RetroLab).

There are still discussion around what we should do about git histories between jupyter/notebook and jupyterlab/retrolab (i.e. do we merge the two histories or not?). In the meantime, @bollwyvl mentioned changing the current jupyter-notebook entrypoint in notebook to retrolab might be a good place to start for the pre-release.

I'd also like to suggest that we temporarily rename the jupyterlab/retrolab repository to jupyterlab/notebook-7 or something similar, since the name "retrolab" might add some confusion for users. It's officially notebook-7 now.

Here are the steps I propose (and we should discuss):

1. Add retrolab as a dependency of the notebook package in jupyter/notebook.
2. Change the jupyter-notebook entrypoint in jupyter/notebook to run retrolab.
   1. Add some messaging in the logs that tell users they are looking at a new interface. If they find issues, they should report them to the jupyterlab/retrolab (or better, jupyterlab/notebook-7) repository.
   2. Also add messaging to point users to the classic entrypoint in the next point
3. Add a new entrypoint that allows users to still run the classic notebook, say jupyter-classic or something similar.

Notebook 7 pre release steps

• Release notebook_shim
• Drop nbclassic (and notebook dependency) from JupyterLab
• Add notebook_shim as dependency to nbclassic
• Release JupyterLab Pre-release (4.0): https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab/releases/tag/v4.0.0a20
• Create a 6.x branch
• Move RetroLab to Notebook main (v7) (Draft PR to prepare for the move)
• Pre-release Notebook 7

Ping @tonyfast @bollwyvl @jtpio

[jtpio]

Thanks @Zsailer for opening this 👍

Probably the main issue with this approach will be RetroLab coming with the /retro endpoints. So for an end user using the pre-release of Notebook 7 with jupyter notebook, this will result in different URLs which might be confusing. Some UI elements will also still be referring to "RetroLab" which can look odd at first to someone installing the notebook package.

[bollwyvl]

My suggestion was such that we might "get away" with a fair amount of reuse-by-extension, and not get have to get too crazy on it, but could it be its own (wrapper) NotebookApp(RetrolabApp) in a new retroapp.py that:

• used add_handlers directly to achieve the "classic" urls
• specified appName in page_settings such that it said Notebook instead of Retrolab

If all of these things are hardcoded all over, maybe this is a good time to push on this (and the lab 4 upstream).

[Zsailer]

Last week, we discussed moving the development of retrolab to the notebook repo.

This repo's master branch would become retrolab and the classic notebook would be maintained on a 6.x.x branch, i.e. 6.4.x today.

I went ahead and created a 6.4.x branch. @jtpio will work on submitting a PR with retrolab to the master branch.

[jtpio]

submitting a PR with retrolab to the master branch.

Linking to jupyterlab/retrolab#323 (draft PR to get the CI checks) where some work has been started to make the transition.

[jtpio]

Posting here the steps to make the first v7 pre-release happen, as discussed yesterday during the weekly Notebook meeting:

• Notebook 7 pre release steps:
  • Release notebook_shim
  • Drop nbclassic (and notebook dependency) from JupyterLab
  • Add notebook_shim as dependency to nbclassic
  • Release JupyterLab Pre-release (4.0)
  • Move RetroLab to Notebook main (v7) (Draft PR to prepare for the move)
  • Pre-release Notebook 7
  • Move Notebook JS to nbclassic?
    • possible, would require changing endpoints
    • downstream dependencies would not understand this
    • alternative
      • keep v6 branch "alive"

[jtpio]

Once we have a first prerelease out, we can close this issue and open a new "Notebook v7 Release Plan" issue.

Or rename this issue to "Notebook v7 Release Plan" and continue here.

[jtpio]

Posting here the steps to make the first v7 pre-release happen

I moved the checklist to the top-level comment for visibility, and added links to the relevant issues and PRs: #6266 (comment)

[jtpio]

This repo's master branch would become retrolab and the classic notebook would be maintained on a 6.x.x branch, i.e. 6.4.x today.

What branch do we want to create?

• 6.x
• 6.4.x
• 6.5.x

More branches could still be created later on if needed.