notebook/docs/source/development.rst

Development

Installing Javascript machinery

Running the Notebook from the source code on Github requires some Javascript tools to build/minify the CSS and Javascript components. We do these steps when making releases, so there's no need for these tools when installing released versions of the Notebook.

First, install Node.js. The installers on the Node.js website also include Node's package manager, npm. Alternatively, install both of these from your package manager. For example, on Ubuntu or Debian:

sudo apt-get install nodejs-legacy npm

You can then build the Javascript and CSS by running:

python setup.py css js

This will automatically fetch the remaining dependencies (bower, less) and install them in a subdirectory.

For quick iteration on the Notebook's Javascript you can deactivate the use of the bundled and minified Javacript by using the option --NotebookApp.ignore_minified_js=True. This might though highly increase the number of requests that the browser make to the server, but can allow to test Javascript file modification without going through the compilation step that can take up to 30 sec.