Installation

Installing nbdime

To install the latest stable release using pip:

pip install --upgrade nbdime

This will also install and enable the nbdime extensions (server, notebook and jupyterlab). To disable these extensions, run:

nbdime extensions --disable [--sys-prefix/--user/--system]

The --system (default) and --user flags determine which users the extensions will be configured for. Note that you should use --sys-prefix to only enable it for the currently active virtual environment (e.g. with conda or virtualenv).

If the extensions did not install/enable on install, you can run:

nbdime extensions --enable [--sys-prefix/--user/--system]

where the flags are the same as described above.

For manual registration see Notebook Extensions.

Dependencies

nbdime requires Python version 3.6 or higher.

nbdime depends on the following Python packages, which will be installed by pip:

  • nbformat
  • tornado
  • colorama

and nbdime’s web-based viewers depend on the following Node.js packages:

  • codemirror
  • json-stable-stringify
  • jupyter-js-services
  • jupyterlab
  • lumino

Installing latest development version

Installing a development version of nbdime requires Node.js.

Installing nbdime using pip will install the Python package dependencies and will automatically run npm to install the required Node.js packages.

To install Node.js, either follow the instructions on its webpage or install it from conda (conda install nodejs). Alternatively, if you use venv to manage your environment, you can install nodeenv to have node managed by venv. See this page for details.

Install with pip

Download and install directly from source:

pip install -e git+https://github.com/jupyter/nbdime#egg=nbdime

Or clone the nbdime repository and use pip to install:

git clone https://github.com/jupyter/nbdime
cd nbdime
pip install -e .

Installing Jupyter extensions

Note

Only run one of the following two server commands, running both can cause issues in some cases

If you want to use the development version of the notebook and lab extensions, you will also have to run the following commands after the pip dev install:

jupyter serverextension enable --py nbdime --sys-prefix # if developing for jupyter notebook

jupyter server extension enable nbdime # if developing for jupyter lab or nbclassic

jupyter nbextension install --py nbdime --sys-prefix [--sym-link]
jupyter nbextension enable --py nbdime --sys-prefix

jupyter labextension link ./packages/nbdime --no-build
jupyter labextension install ./packages/labextension

If you do any changes to the front-end code, run npm run build from the repoistory root to rebuild the extensions. If you make any changes to the server extension, you will have to restart the server to pick up the changes!

Note

The optional --sym-link flag for jupyter nbextension install allows the notebook frontend to pick up a newly built version of the extension on a page refresh. For details on the other flags, see Notebook Extensions.