Add Voila Icon to JupyterLab Launcher

[balajialg]

Problem

Currently, when Voila the package is added to the JupyterHub singleuser image, it does not create an icon in the JupyterLab launcher. Is there specific reason for not automatically creating an icon for Voila in the JupyterLab launcher when the package is installed.

Is there a way to bypass this and manually add an icon for Voila in launcher? Will you recommend that approach?

Proposed Solution

I would like to have the voila icon appear as part of Jupyterlab launcher when I add the package to the image

Additional context

Here is the link to the environment.yml file of our Jupyterhub deployment installing voila and voici.

Your insights on this matter would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your work on this valuable project! (@ryanlovett)

[martinRenou]

Thanks for opening an issue!

Indeed adding a Voila icon in the launcher by default is a good idea 👍🏽 We should do it.

In the meantime, I'd suggest looking into https://github.com/trungleduc/jupyter_app_launcher which allows you to customize your launcher with custom items like Voila dashboards.

[balajialg]

Thanks @martinRenou! Will look into it

[jgunstone]

a related suggestion...
it would be cool if files named with the extension: .voila or .voila.ipynb (or .voila.py) automatically opened with voila (jlab voila preview).
I think the majority of the time, the jupyter_app_launcher @martinRenou suggested is the right way to go... but if you were to create an app that runs on data relative to the location of the notebook file this would be very useful.

the colour of the icon could change to voila colours to signify this, i.e.: