allow configuring the path of the contents directory

[keewis]

This is the one remaining issue I have before being able to merge the PR that adds try_examples to the xarray docs.

Basically, I would run sphinx once and then retry again after making changes, and if the first run exited with a non-zero exit code the second run would try to execute all the notebooks in the _contents directory. However, if I were to add _contents to exclude_patterns jupyterlite wouldn't be able to find the notebooks in _contents.

As far as I can tell, changing the path from _contents to _build/contents (or _build/jupyterlite-contents) would always succeed, and wouldn't get confused by exclude_patterns. So what I did was:

1. make the path configurable
2. clean up before the next run instead of after the current run

cc @agriyakhetarpal

[keewis]

reading the configuration docs, what contents refers to is quite confusing... on main there's jupyterlite_contents and jupyterlite_ignore_contents, as well as the hard-coded CONTENT_DIR that possibly is only used for try_examples? If so, I might rename the setting to try_examples_content_dir (or jupyterlite_try_examples_content_dir, not sure).

[agriyakhetarpal]

Hi @keewis, sorry about the delay here; it's been conference season for me recently. And I've never gotten around to playing with your xarray PR (as unfortunate as that is, from my end, apologies) :D

My memory also eludes me, but if I remember correctly, the intermediary folder where the notebooks are stored was named contents – which should be something like jupyterlite_contents indeed.

clean up before the next run instead of after the current run

This makes sense to me. We could also escape a bit of this mess and make the intermediary folder a temporary directory per build...

[keewis]

no worries, I've found a way to work around any delays: upload a conda package to a custom channel on prefix.dev, then use that until the PR has been resolved.

the intermediary folder where the notebooks are stored was named contents

it was _contents, which was by default adjacent to _build.

We could also escape a bit of this mess and make the intermediary folder a temporary

potentially, but I think it is nice to be able to check the generated notebooks in case anything went wrong. Another option would be to put it by default into _build/contents (or at least, below _build).

[agriyakhetarpal]

Thank you! Yes, let's not touch that any further; I agree with your reasoning to be able to check the notebooks.

I had no clue about uploading conda packages to prefix.dev channels. Looks like this is so much more easier now. Thanks for sharing that tip :)

[martinRenou]

Thanks!