possibly removing qtconsole from jupyter

[ivanov]

I wanted to start a conversation about the possibility of removing qtconsole from the base jupyter metapackage. Depending on timelines and feedback, it might makes sense to incorporate this into an eventual 1.1.0 release mentioned in #678

Per comments on #358 - QT is quite a heavy dependency. At 90 Mb, it is roughly 3 times larger than a complete python language installation from the comment on that issue, and I would venture to guess that the vast majority of our users do not use it.

I've opened a poll on the discourse, so you can fill it out there, or also provide a reaction here:

Please use a reaction to indicate how you feel about removing qtconsole from the jupyter meta-package?

👍 I would welcome this change with enthusiasm
👎 I would be very unhappy if it was removed
😕 I would be inconvenienced and sad, but I could deal with it 😦
👀 I don't use qtconsole, so feel free to remove it

Please leave your thoughts here, or on the discourse thread.

[minrk]

Seems sensible with current usage, qtconsole seems much more a component of things like Spyder than a standalone application these days.

Excellent, thoughtful communication of the proposal, @ivanov!

[ivanov]

Please consider boosting one of these message so that we can get feedback from more of our users:

https://mastodon.sdf.org/@ivanov/111581177873962864
https://twitter.com/ivanov/status/1735429774158463045
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/paulivanov_poll-and-feedback-on-possibly-removing-qtconsole-activity-7141195557334581248-OPxG

[3fon3fonov]

I personally use qtconsole and jupyter in the Exo-Striker tool:

I would be sad if jupyter does not come with a qtconsole, but if qtconsole is developed in a separate repo and is in line with new versions of jupyter, I would not be against.

[minrk]

@3fon3fonov it's always been in a separate repo since we started calling things "Jupyter" with the IPython->Jupyter split. This is only about which packages you get with the jupyter metapackage, which started out re-bundling everything that used to be in IPython. Exo-Striker already depends directly on qtconsole, so it would not see any change from this.

[mosheleon]

Lighter is better 🚀 (I use QT but not via Jupyter)

Thank you for the visibility @ivanov 👋

[Czaki]

The qtconsole itself does not depend on QT. It only depends on qtpy and qt backend needs to be installed separately. So currently, install of Jupyter does not lead to install any of qt version.

[ivanov]

@Czaki depends on how it is being installed. what you say might be true for those using pip, but that's not the case for those using conda, or some operating system package managers.

[rootsmusic]

If there are any version constraints on dependencies, then it'd be better to add a pyproject.toml. As a project, users can choose which packages to bundle without incompatible dependencies.

[goyalyashpal]

would it be available to be used separately from pip?

i havent used it, but seeing from screenshots on the web, it seems it is like a TUI version of jupyter notebook. am i rihgt? and so, how does it differ from ipython?

qtconsole screenshot

i came here from this mastadoon/hachyderm post

[Czaki]

would it be available to be used separately from pip?

Yes. You could even today do pip install qtconsole. This proposition is only removing qtconsole from jupyter dependencies, so it will not be installed by default.