Available for documentation/information about ipywidgets and Jupyterlab 4

[RRosio]

Hello, I am opening this issue with some questions about using Jupyterlab 4 and ipywidgets.
I am wondering if as of now there any outlined steps that widget maintainers will have to take? I saw that previously, a section in the changelog has been included with details about any steps widget maintainers needed to take for the update from Lab 2 to Lab 3. It seems that these helpful instructions were provided by @jasongrout.. I am wondering if there is any similar documentation that one might reference as we begin trying out the latest releases of Jupyterlab 4?

[echarles]

I wonder if there is someone working on updating ipywidgets for JupyterLab 4.

[echarles]

I will start porting ipywidgets to jupyterlab 4

cc/ @jasongrout

[maartenbreddels]

I am hoping/requesting that there should be no action from 3rd party widget maintainers to be compatible with jupyter lab 4.0. I think if we continue doing this for every jupyter lab release, this will lead to maintenance fatigue, where people might get less enthusiastic about building their libraries on top of ipywidgets/jupyter-widgets.

[echarles]

I will draft a PR that bumps to jlab4, fixes build and test issues, and logs any potential action for the ipywidgets authors like done on https://ipywidgets.readthedocs.io/en/latest/migration_guides.html

Agree that hopefully no action would be needed from ipywidgets author side.

[martinRenou]

AFAIK ipywidgets and custom widgets libraries should not need to take any action to work with JupyterLab 4. Latest ipywidgets works as-is with JupyterLab 4, the only "issue" is a runtime warning in the JS console that ipywidgets requires Lumino 1 packages but Lumino 2 packages are loaded. Lumino being a "shared package" by default, Lumino 2 will be used anyway.

The only valid reason I can think of for custom widgets libraries to not work with JupyterLab 4 would be if they use APIs from Lumino 1 that got broken in the Lumino 2 upgrade. I also wonder if packages that require the old phosphor packages will still work?

That being said, I had to take some actions in ipydatagrid for it to work: jupyter-widgets/ipydatagrid#397. For some unknown reason, Lumino packages were not properly shared in ipydatagrid (even though it should be shared by default), ipydatagrid ending up shipping its own version of Lumino (v1) that was incompatible with what's in the JupyterLab 4 page.

[martinRenou]

We should probably update lumino dependencies in ipywidgets from e.g. "@lumino/coreutils": "^1.11.1" to "@lumino/coreutils": "^1.11.1 || ^2" to get rid of the warnings and allow for custom widget libraries that really need Lumino 2 to build.

[echarles]

. For some unknown reason, Lumino packages were not properly shared in ipydatagrid (even though it should be shared by default

How to avoid those kind of unknown reasons to make ipywidgets authors life easier?

We should probably update lumino dependencies in ipywidgets from e.g. "@lumino/coreutils": "^1.11.1" to "@lumino/coreutils": "^1.11.1 || ^2" to get rid of the warnings and allow for custom widget libraries that really need Lumino 2 to build.

As jupyterlab4 will depend on lumino2, would it make sense to just enforce "@lumino/coreutils": "^1.11.1 || ^2"?

[echarles]

I guess it depends also which version we want to assign to ipywidgets on juptyerlab4. Based on the risks, I would naturally think to a major bump, so ipywidgets 9, any other ideas here?

[martinRenou]

How to avoid those kind of unknown reasons to make ipywidgets authors life easier?

This case may be a bug in JupyterLab builder that we need to figure out how to solve.

As jupyterlab4 will depend on lumino2, would it make sense to just enforce "@lumino/coreutils": "^1.11.1 || ^2"?

I don't understand that question, can you elaborate on this?

I would naturally think to a major bump, so ipywidgets 9

I really don't think this is needed. As I said, ipywidgets 8 works with JupyterLab 4 already. Being softer on the Lumino dependency by specifying Lumino 1 OR Lumino 2 should not be considered a breaking change.

[echarles]

I was meaning "@lumino/coreutils": "^2", but as you trust there will be no breaking change, forget that.

[martinRenou]

Oh ok. Then I understand why you mentioned bumping to ipywidgets 9 :)

I may be wrong, but we will probably be lucky and "@lumino/coreutils": "^1.11.1 || ^2" could just work (famous last word).

[maartenbreddels]

AFAIK ipywidgets and custom widgets libraries should not need to take any action to work with JupyterLab 4.

🥳 , 🎶 to my 👂

[maartenbreddels]

Ok, we just checked with ipyvue, and jupyter lab seems to be forgiving in dependency pinning: widgetti/ipyvue#55 (comment)
I think however, we'll just remove the version pin widgetti/ipyvue#67