Registering kernels in ipython / jupyter notebook - kernel.json

Question

With the latest version of IPython kernel can be registered by placing the kernel.json file in ~/.ipython/kernels/<kernel-name>/ .

I'm currently trying to add the julia and R core, and I wonder who is responsible for creating and maintaining these kernel.json files.

I am currently googled and created after kernel.json for julia manually:

 { "display_name": "Julia", "language": "julia", "argv": [ "julia", "-i", "-F", "/User/<user>/.julia/v0.3/IJulia/src/kernel.jl", "{connection_file}" ], "codemirror_mode":"julia" } 

While this works, due to the hard path to kernel.jl I will have to adapt kernel.json for every major julia update.

Should I take care of creating and maintaining these files? Or are they part of a kernel implementation or other third-party packages?

Answer 1

Usually, people create symbolic links to avoid certain versions hanging.

 ln -s ~/.julia/v0.3 ~/.julia/latest 

then you can use latest instead of v0.3 in kernel.json.

When changing versions, you only need to change the symbolic link.