Jupyterlab: Is it really mandatory required npm to install lab extension?

[hainm]

Original from this thread: https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab/pull/2038#issuecomment-299618742

Saying I would like to distribute nglview lab extension via conda.
Can a user just need to

conda install nglview -c bioconda

Requiring handle npm, yarn, ... is too much for a regular user who does not really care much
about programing. My impression is that we only need to build a tarfile, copy to correct lab location, update some configs (?) and thing just works.

[jasongrout]

Yes, it really is mandatory. When you install an extension, we have to rebuild all of jupyterlab's javascript, which involves installing with npm, deduping, and webpacking.

We have some ideas about how to make distributing npm easier, but it's not a worry with conda - conda packages npm, so npm is just a conda install away already.

[blink1073]

cf https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab/issues/2065 and https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab/pull/2162

[jasongrout]

Closing as answered. Thanks for asking so we could document this.