Open existing Notebook without kernel

[davidchall]

There are times when opening a Notebook does not require a new kernel to be started (e.g. reading or only editing Markdown cells). Currently these functions are still possible after you have shutdown the kernel.

Although starting up a kernel is usually inexpensive, there are times when this isn't the case (e.g. connecting a PySpark kernel to YARN). There may also be times when you want to view a Notebook but don't have the right kernel installed.

Perhaps we could have a new option in the "Open With" menu for this purpose? I suggest it might be called "Notebook (no kernel)".

[thincal]

+1

[ian-r-rose]

@davidchall Note that you can achieve this by opening a new notebook from the file menu and selecting "No Kernel" from the selection dropdown.

[thavidu]

Seems like this could be an opposite default of the existing

    // Shut down kernel
    // Whether to shut down or not the kernel when closing a notebook.
    "kernelShutdown": false,

setting

I wish there was something like:

// Whether to automatically start a kernel when opening a notebook
"kernelAutostart": true,

[tilusnet]

@davidchall Note that you can achieve this by opening a new notebook from the file menu and selecting "No Kernel" from the selection dropdown.

I am not sure I follow. The OP wants to open an existing notebook without kernel, not a new notebook.

[rvalieris]

I will go a step further and say that instead of an option, it should behave like on google colab, where a kernel is only started if the user tries to execute a code cell.

very often I will open a old notebook just to check what I did last time, if I am not careful I end up with a bunch of idle kernels open because of this, I need to manually close each one.

there are also other bugs related to this behavior, such as: #8574, and related discussions: #5241

[giacomolanciano]

+1

[jasongrout]

#12019 discusses some ideas for how to implement opening a notebook without starting a kernel.