[IPython-dev] Plans for notebook server / Authentication

[Andreas Hilboll]

Hi IPython devs,

first of all thanks a lot for such a great product!  I'd like to inquire
what are your plans for the notebook server?  I'd want to deploy it on a
large server, with access for all my users.  Ideally, the following
things would hold:

- all access to the notebook server is password-protected
- users have to login using their username and password
- users and passwords are not stored in IPython itself, but notebook
server authenticates against the (Linux) server's own authentication
system (/etc/passwd, or LDAP)
- users have the possibility to browse their $HOME directory on the
server and open/save notebooks from/to any place they have filesystem
access to

An unrelated point which just comes to my mind is have version control
inside the notebook. For this, it would be enough to have a button to
push the notebook to some (git) repository, and have a link in the
notebook itself to open that repository's homepage (obviously, this
would only work with web-hosted repos, like gist, github, bitbucket, you
name it).

Are there plans in these directions?  How can I learn about which
directions IPython is going?  Do you need help implementing the server
stuff I've been mentioning?

Cheers, Andreas.