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Configuring the Kernels

Kernel Name

If we have multiple kernels installed, we can choose to override the kernel saved in the notebook using nbsphinx_kernel_name:

nbsphinx_kernel_name = 'python-upstream-dev'

which uses the kernel named python-upstream-dev instead of the kernel name stored in the notebook.

Kernel Arguments

We can pass arguments to the kernel by using nbsphinx_execute_arguments, for example to set plot options:

nbsphinx_execute_arguments = [
    "--InlineBackend.figure_formats={'svg', 'pdf'}",
]

Environment Variables

The contents of os.environ after the execution of conf.py will be passed as environment variables to the kernel. As an example, MY_DUMMY_VARIABLE has been set in conf.py like this:

import os
os.environ['MY_DUMMY_VARIABLE'] = 'Hello from conf.py!'

… and it can be checked in the notebook like this:

import os
os.environ['MY_DUMMY_VARIABLE']

'Hello from conf.py!'

This is useful if we want to edit PYTHONPATH in order to compile the documentation without installing the project:

import os

src = os.path.abspath('../src')
os.environ['PYTHONPATH'] = src

If you are using https://mybinder.org/ and you want to define environment variables, you should create a file .binder/start in your repository (see Binder docs) containing definitions like this:

#!/bin/bash
export MY_DUMMY_VARIABLE="Hello from .binder/start!"
exec "$@"