Align HoloViz sites to use the same version of nbsite and pydata_sphinx_theme

[maximlt]

The HoloViz sites should be built using the same version of nbsite, pydata_sphinx and Python.

nbsite:

site	channel	version
panel	PyPI --pre	0.8.0rc2
hvplot	pyviz/label/dev	0.8.0rc2
holoviews	pyviz/label/dev	0.8.0rc2
geoviews	pyviz/label/dev	0.8.0rc2
datashader	pyviz/label/dev	0.8.0rc2
colorcet	pyviz/label/dev	0.8.0rc2
lumen	pyviz/label/dev	0.8.0rc2
param	PyPI --pre	0.8.0rc2
holoviz	pyviz/label/dev	0.8.0rc2
examples	?	?

pydata-sphinx-theme:

site	channel	version
panel	PyPI	0.9.0
hvplot	conda-forge	0.9.0
holoviews	conda-forge	0.9.0
geoviews	conda-forge	0.8.1
datashader	conda-forge	0.8.1
colorcet	conda-forge	0.8.1
lumen	conda-forge	0.9.0
param	PyPI	0.8.1
holoviz	conda-forge	0.8.1
examples	NA	NA

Python:

site	version
panel	3.9
hvplot	3.8
holoviews	3.8
geoviews	3.9
datashader	3.8
colorcet	3.9
lumen	3.9
param	3.9
holoviz	3.9
examples	3.7

EDIT

I just saw that Param was pinning 'myst_nb ==0.12.2' so it's worth checking if other sites do that too.

Updates:

• param: Python pinned to 3.9 / nbsite pinned to 0.8.0rc2
• holoviews: nbsite pinned to 0.8.0rc2

[droumis]

are you going to pin nbsite?

[maximlt]

I haven't yet decided actually. There's some work required first anyway so that the projects don't all have to include some (quite a lot actually) of boiler plate, that includes CSS and template files. When this is done it'll be much easier to decide how to proceed.

[maximlt]

One difficulty with NBSite and the pyviz channels is that it's not super easy to experiment building a single site with a new dev version of NBSite. Most projects use the pyviz/label/dev channel to build their site. They've added it because at some point they either needed a dev version of another HoloViz package or a dev version of a HoloViz tool (pyct, pyctdev, nbsite, nbsmoke, ...). This kind of change is usually not reverted. So when a new dev release of NBSite (or any other HoloViz package really) is made all the other projects are affected. Unless they've added pins, but maintaining these pins is tedious.

I think we could/should actually create a pyviz channels called tools and tools-dev and push new versions of the tools there instead of on pyviz/label/main and pyviz/label/dev. That would allow for more granularity and decoupling the main packages from the tools.

A normal doc build would rely on pyviz/label/main and on pyviz/label/tools. I think the Github actions could be set up so that as a developer you could manually choose whether the action should pull the tools from pyviz/label/tools or from pyviz/label/tools-dev. The workflow I'm thinking of would be:

• making some changes on NBSite, they look good locally on a small site
• making a dev release of NBSite, published at pyviz/label/tools-dev
• triggering the CI of Panel and hvPlot, building the docs with the tools being pulled the tools from pyviz/label/tools-dev
• checking the dev sites of Panel and hvPlot, they look alright
• making a release of NBSite, so that the changes propagate to all the sites when they eventually get their release

I'll credit @jlstevens for the idea of using other channels, I think it's a pretty decent workflow.