# Statement of Need: Integrating JupyterBook and JupyterHubs via CI

**URL:** <https://discourse.pangeo.io/t/statement-of-need-integrating-jupyterbook-and-jupyterhubs-via-ci/2705>\
**Category:** Cloud\
**Created:** [September 1, 2022, 9:40pm UTC](https://discourse.pangeo.io/t/statement-of-need-integrating-jupyterbook-and-jupyterhubs-via-ci/2705 "2022-09-01T21:40:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 14

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**Author:** ![brian-rose](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/discourse.pangeo.io/brian-rose/32/184_2.png) [@brian-rose](https://discourse.pangeo.io/u/brian-rose)\
**Post date:** [November 7, 2022, 10:34pm UTC](https://discourse.pangeo.io/t/statement-of-need-integrating-jupyterbook-and-jupyterhubs-via-ci/2705/14 "2022-11-07T22:34:52Z")

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Hi all,

Circling back to this important topic: Pythia Cookbooks now have a solution for the “expensive, reproducible notebook” problem.

The latest [Cookbook template](https://github.com/ProjectPythiaCookbooks/cookbook-template) supports a new option `execute_notebook: binder` in the JupyterBook `_config.yml` file.

Setting that option will outsource the execution of notebooks to the BinderHub URL specific in the same `_config.yml` file. This is done via GitHub Actions and a call to Binderbot under the hood.

You can see this in action for the [HRRR-AWS Cookbook](https://github.com/ProjectPythiaCookbooks/HRRR-AWS-cookbook) where we set the `execute_notebook: binder` option and the build is being tested nightly.

Cookbook authors can now easily toggle back and forth between executing notebooks on a BinderHub and executing on GitHub Actions just by changing the `execute_notebook` option, e.g. [this demo pull request](https://github.com/ProjectPythiaCookbooks/HRRR-AWS-cookbook/pull/17).

Basically the Cookbook template now offers a full platform for collaborative authoring, execution, and publishing of reproducible content, so long as a suitable BinderHub service is available.

(Our template currently points to @ktyle’s temporary proof-of-concept BinderHub on jetstream2 – we don’t expect that to be a stable resource. But changing the URL of the BinderHub is a one-liner in the `_config.yml` file. It need not be a one-Binder-to-rule-them-all situation)

I’m pretty excited about the possibilities here!

While this all works for now, putting it together was a bit of a hack and involves overloading an existing config field for JupyterBook. Also the Binderbot package needs maintenance – for example it breaks under Python 3.11.

I’m curious to hear some feedback from the community at this point:

- Are we heading in a useful direction?
- Should we think about migrating the Binderbot-based solution upstream into JupyterBook itself?
- Is Binderbot the right technology, and is there interest in updating and maintaining it?

Shamelessly tagging folks who might have opinions about all this: @choldgraf @rabernat @jbednar @scottyhq @yuvipanda

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