Development setup#

Do I need a development environment?

You only need to set up a development environment if you plan to change JupyterGIS itself — fixing a bug, adding a feature, or editing these docs locally. If you just want to use JupyterGIS, you can skip everything below and install the released package by following the user install instructions.

Development install#

Note

You will need Node.js to build the extension package.

This project uses pnpm (version 11) as its JavaScript package manager. You can either install it following the official instructions, or via micromamba below.

Clone the source#

# Clone the repo to your local environment
git clone https://github.com/geojupyter/jupytergis.git

# Change directory to the jupytergis directory
cd jupytergis

Create a virtual environment#

What is a virtual environment, and why use one?

A virtual environment is an isolated space for this project’s dependencies, so the versions JupyterGIS needs (Python, Node.js, QGIS) don’t clash with other projects on your machine — and vice versa. The instructions below set one up for you.

Micromamba (Recommended)

Note

Micromamba is a lightweight package manager compatible with conda environments. It is recommended for setting up the JupyterGIS development environment. If you don’t have it installed, please follow the official documentation: Micromamba Installation Guide

# Create a virtual environment
micromamba create --name jupytergis_dev -c conda-forge pip "python=3.13.*" "nodejs=24" pnpm qgis

# Activate it
micromamba activate jupytergis_dev

Plain python

Note

You will need to install some non-Python dependencies (e.g. QGIS, Node.js, pnpm) separately when using this method.

# Create a virtual environment
python -m venv .venv

# Activate it
source .venv/bin/activate

Install dependencies and build#

# Install packages in development mode.
# WARNING: This step may hang indefinitely due to a bug in Nx. See
#          troubleshooting below.
python scripts/dev-install.py

# Rebuild extension Typescript source after making changes
pnpm run build

Note

By default, the pnpm run build command generates the source maps for this extension to make it easier to debug using the browser dev tools. To also generate source maps for the JupyterLab core extensions, you can run the following command:

jupyter lab build --minimize=False

Watch for changes and rebuild#

You can watch the source directory and run JupyterLab at the same time in different terminals to watch for changes in the extension’s source and automatically rebuild the extension.

# Watch the source directory in one terminal, automatically rebuilding when needed
pnpm run watch

# Run JupyterLab in another terminal
jupyter lab

With the watch command running, every saved change will immediately be built locally and available in your running JupyterLab. Refresh JupyterLab to load the change in your browser (you may need to wait several seconds for the extension to be rebuilt).

Note

pnpm run watch will sit and wait for a change once started. Edit a file to trigger a build.

Development uninstall#

pip uninstall jupytergis

In development mode, you will also need to remove the symlink created by jupyter labextension develop command. To find its location, you can run jupyter labextension list to figure out where the labextensions folder is located. Then you can remove the symlink named jupytergis within that folder.