[IPython-dev] Inprocess kernel for Qt frontend

[Fernando Perez]

Hey Robert,

On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 6:23 AM, Robert Kern <robert.kern at gmail.com> wrote:
> With a bit of hacking and code duplication, I managed to get the IPythonWidget
> Qt frontend to talk to an inprocess kernel.
>
>   https://gist.github.com/1416977
>
> I originally did this work against an older version of IPython (i.e. when we
> used names like XReqSocketChannel) but haven't been able to release it publicly
> until now. I have updated it to run off of master. I may have missed some
> necessary changes. I also may have missed some opportunities; could we use the
> BlockingKernelManager to do the same thing now?
>
> I certainly don't want this code integrated into IPython as-is (hence a gist
> rather than a pull request), but it exists as a workaround for people who do
> want to embed an IPython interpreter into their Qt application. Is there a way
> we can extend the IPython API to support this more directly so one does not have
> to duplicate code the way I did?

That's certainly our intent, and I have a sketch in my head of how it
needs to be done, unfortunately no time right now to really work on it
(my available ipython time is fully consumed with keeping up with the
PR flow to get 0.12 released, sorry).  But I've made this an issue we
can track moving forward:

http://mail.scipy.org/pipermail/ipython-dev/2011-December/008456.html

hopefully soon we can clean this up, it would be great to get 0.13 out
with a solid implementation of this idea that can be shared by the qt
console and terminal ones without code duplication.  That is one of
the major milestones we need to achieve before considering ipython
1.0.  Yes, I've said it, there will eventually be a 1.0 :)

Thanks for getting this moving!

Cheers,

f