On 7 October at 09:00 CET, a new version of the Terrascope JupyterLab environment will be released. These are the changes:
1. A duplicate GDAL installation will be removed
2. Opening a terminal now automatically activates the kernel Python environment.
3. --user installations will now go to the /tmp folder instead of home directories. These installs will be non-persistent across sessions, making it clearer which packages are available and simplifying maintenance.
4. The notebook server memory will be increased from 4 GB to 6 GB.
These updates will make the environment more user-friendly and easier to maintain. In addition, we’ll be cleaning up old package installations in users’ home directories in the coming weeks.
What this means for you:
1. Custom Python packages: All user installs are now temporary. New package installs using the --user flag will remain available only during the lifetime of the session. Once the notebook server restarts, the Python environment will reset to the default one.
2. More resources: You can now run more powerful notebooks with 6 GB memory available.
3. Cleanup of old packages: Old package installs in your home directory (from Python versions ≤ 3.11) will be removed some time after the update. Normally this should not impact you, but we will create another announcement before the cleanup takes place.
There will be no impact for notebooks running during the update. The new environment will only be applied after a restart.
