Generalize the extension / repo

[rokroskar]

This repo is constructed to work with repo2docker which is great and fulfills the original purpose of spinning up VSCode on Binder. Would it be useful to provide a more general Dockerfile based on jupyter/base-notebook for those who don't use repo2docker and/or binder but do use the Jupyter stack in their docker images?

[manics]

You might find this discussion on zero-to-jupyterhub useful, it includes a Dockerfile:
jupyterhub/zero-to-jupyterhub-k8s#1902

[rokroskar]

Indeed thanks for the pointer @manics - looking quickly at that PR it seems that all that is needed for what they're describing is exactly this type of minimal Dockerfile that just adds code to the base jupyter image. Doesn't require any changes to JH at all and if you give the users the choice of default starting URL they can just launch straight into VSCode. Anyway, I'll read the rest of that thread and add comments there :)

[rokroskar]

Here's a Dockerfile that works:

FROM jupyter/base-notebook

USER root
RUN apt-get update -y && \
    apt-get install -y git && \
    wget https://github.com/cdr/code-server/releases/download/v3.6.2/code-server_3.6.2_amd64.deb && \
    dpkg -i ./code-server*.deb && \
    rm code-server_3.6.2_amd64.deb && \
    apt-get clean

USER $NB_USER
RUN pip install git+https://github.com/betatim/vscode-binder && \
    jupyter serverextension enable --py jupyter_server_proxy && \
    jupyter labextension install --no-build @jupyterlab/server-proxy && \
    jupyter lab build && \
    npm cache clean --force && \
    rm -rf /home/${NB_USER}/.cache && \
    code-server --install-extension ms-python.python

I'd be happy to make a PR that adds this is a documentation of sorts but I'm not sure where it should go.

[manics]

See what @betatim thinks regarding how he wants to manage this repo, but one option could be to create your own repo, setup an automated build on Docker Hub (or some other system) and link to it from the README?