Pin 'active' notebook making it easier to run multiple commands on that notebook

[haroldcampbell]

Problem

When I was working on a notebook, I have to provide the same path multiple times. This is tedious, if I'm working on the same notebook.

Proposal

Allow a user to pin one notebook per "project" so repeated commands can target that notebook without requiring the notebook path each time.

This should be a project-scoped (.e.g folder containing the .jupyter foler) setting stored alongside the existing CLI config in ./.jupyter/cli.json.

Changes to manage pinning path

• Add a top-level nb pin <path> command to set the pinned notebook.
• Add nb pin --clear to remove the pinned notebook.
• Add nb pin with no arguments to show the current pinned notebook.

Changes need for path commands

Allow these existing commands to omit <path> when a notebook is pinned:

• nb read
• nb view
• nb execute
• nb cell add
• nb cell update
• nb cell delete
• nb output clear

Other consideration

I'm unsure how this would work with the nb search <path> <pattern>

[ellisonbg]

That would definitely help to simplify the humans use cases.

[3coins]

A lightweight option would be using an env variable without introducing a new command.

export NB_NOTEBOOK=example.ipynb
nb read
nb execute

The second option would be to add a new command use. "Pin" sounds permanent.

# Set active notebook
nb use notebook.ipynb 

# Uses active notebook
nb read  

# Uses active notebook
nb execute  

# Show: "Currently using: notebook.ipynb"
nb use  

# Shows connection + active notebook
nb status  

This mirrors tools like:

• nvm use v18 (node version)
• pyenv local 3.11 (Python version)
• git switch main (branch context)

[haroldcampbell]

I prefer the "use" command over the "pin". I'm not a fan of the environment variable options.