JupyterLite is a JupyterLab distribution that runs entirely in the web browser, backed by in-browser language kernels. With standard JupyterLab, where kernels run in separate processes and communicate with the client by message passing, JupyterLite uses kernels that run entirely in the browser, based on JavaScript and WebAssembly.
This means JupyterLite deployments can be scaled to millions of users without the need for individual containers for each user session, only static files need to be served, which can be done with a simple web server like GitHub pages.
This opens up new possibilities for large-scale deployments, eliminating the need for complex cloud computing infrastructure. JupyterLite is versatile and supports a wide range of languages, with the majority of its kernels implemented using Xeus, a C++ library for developing language-specific kernels.
In conjunction with JupyterLite, we present Emscripten-forge, a conda/mamba based distribution for WebAssembly packages. Conda-forge is a community effort and a GitHub organization which contains repositories of conda recipes and thus provides conda packages for a wide range of software and platforms. However, targeting WebAssembly is not supported by conda-forge. Emscripten-forge addresses this gap by providing conda packages for WebAssembly, making it possible to create custom JupyterLite deployments with tailored conda environments containing the required kernels and packages.
In this talk, we delve deep into the JupyterLite ecosystem, exploring its integration with Xeus Mamba and Emscripten-forge.
We will demonstrate how this can be used to create sophisticated JupyterLite deployments with custom conda environments and give an outlook for future developments like R packages and runtime package resolution.
