Investigate an improved jupyterlite deployment mechanism

[stevejpurves]

Context

Jupyterlite dependent code is built and bundled within the thebe-lite package found in this repository. This is then side-loaded by apps/pages that use thebe-core or thebe. This is a useful pattern as it allows downstream non-webpack bundlers to work with thebe while dynamically loading thebe-lite.

The current thebe-lite bundle is created with webpack and in addition to producing .js output files, also bundles the jupyterlite wheels in a directory structure are follows:

lib/
   build/pypi/
                all.json
                pyolite-0.1.0b15-py3-none.anywhl
                etc...
   thebe-lite.min.js
   etc...

Also due to the default jupyterlite configuration these files are always expected to be on this path, and a downstream page/app/server would need to make them available there.

Proposal

Can the bundling & deployment process be improved? and if so how?

Interesting things to aim for would be:

• exposing an interface or docs that enable changes to be made to the jupyterlite configuration
• allow the locations of the all.json and .whl files to be customized
• changes that allow for/prep for use of kernels other than pyolite (related support for jupyterlite + xeus_python kernel #564 )
• other....?

Tasks and updates

No response