Offer RStudio as default frontend for R users
pierrepo opened this issue · comments
RStudio is very appreciated among R users and is often the ad-hoc IDE.
By default, RStudio is injected into the environment when repo2docker detects an R environment.
It would be very nice to allow in the environment creation box to start directly with RStudio (instead of Jupyter Lab). It could be a box to tick, for instance:
[ ] start with RStudio instead of Jupyter Lab (R environments only)
There are however some caveats:
- I believe
tljh-repo2dockeris not aware of the content of the environment (Python, R...) so someone could tick the box even if the environment is not R-based. I'm not sure what could happen next. Probably a404 : Not Found - Within RStudio, user lost integration with Jupyter Hub (
Hub Control Panelin theFilemenu) and there is not easy/visual way to go back to the control panel (although the url is very easy to manipulate).
This would mean changing the default URL to /rstudio?
I'm not sure what could happen next. Probably a 404 : Not Found
Yes that would most likely be a 404
This would mean changing the default URL to /rstudio?
Yes, replacing the trailing /lab part in the URL by /rstudio. At least, this is how I do manually.
It sounds like it should be possible to do that directly in the environment being built, maybe in the postBuild or start files.
There has been a few discussions about having non-Jupyter IDEs / UI by default in repo2docker / Binder:
We would also need to rework the default_url there: https://github.com/plasmabio/plasma/blob/a9f4530948109543b6efc5014194e460b36888de/tljh-plasma/tljh_plasma/__init__.py#L111
It sounds like it should be possible to do that directly in the environment being built
That would the best case:
- No need to modify the UI.
- Responsability of the env creator to chose the suitable frontend
But as far as I understood, it is not obvious (nor possible?)
We would also need to rework the default_url
Yes. And also if the frontend is passed through the UI.
But as far as I understood, it is not obvious (nor possible?)
Indeed it might not be straightforward (at least for now).
Otherwise the downstream TLJH plugin (such as Plasma) could implement some logic to set the default_url on the fly when the server is started, for example based on the name of the environment.
This kind of Binder Menu is also very interesting and could allow to jump from one frontend to another.
This kind of Binder Menu is also very interesting and could allow to jump from one frontend to another.
That would definitively be useful 👍
An alternative for now is to give user a URL to connect to JupyterHub that includes a /user-redirect/rstudio route:
https://dev.plasmabio.org/user-redirect/rstudio
The flow would look like the following:
