[GRASS-dev] Try GRASS GIS online: Binder - mybinder.org

GRASS GRASS developer
1

Dear all,

I would like GRASS GIS to have a page similar to these:

https://jupyter.org/try
“You can try Jupyter out right now, without installing anything.”

https://learngitbranching.js.org/
Learn by doing: Try Git commands right from your web browser. (http://try.github.io/)

https://training.play-with-docker.com/ops-s1-hello/
Play with Docker classroom

It seems that Binder might be the way for all command line and Python related things (and more). I started with couple of notebooks (click the “launch binder” button at the beginning of each readme file):

https://github.com/wenzeslaus/try-grass-in-jupyter
https://github.com/wenzeslaus/try-grass-in-jupyter-with-bash

https://github.com/wenzeslaus/grass-zonal-of-solar

First is a basic Python with starting a GRASS GIS session with outputs saved already (computed notebook). Second is a running GRASS GIS session and Bash without outputs (you need to run it to see any images). Third is like the first, but instead of a basic usage, it is a more elaborate workflow adding Matplotlib (it is unfinished, it should be more than one notebook).

About Binder (mybinder.org): Basically it makes Jupyter Notebooks from Git come alive through Docker. This can be also reproduced on any other server. Binder is a service by Project Jupyter. Binder can do more than just Python (or Bash) notebooks most notably JupyterLab, RStudio, and C/C++.

https://mybinder.readthedocs.io/en/latest/about.html

There is much more to be discussed. Let me know what you think about this and about what should be done before promoting this on the website.

Best,
Vaclav

2

Hi Vaclav,

Sounds really cool to me! Great initiative!

Of course stuff can always be extended if people feel for it, but it seems to be more than good enough to promote it as is. Just my impression from looking at the third example in Binder.

Cheers

Stefan

3

Cool stuff !
I can see a whole lot of GIS courses becoming streamlined with that…
+1

···

Dr. Yann Chemin
+33 7 83 85 5234
JRC, Ispra, IT

4

Hi Yann,

For courses also: https://cocalc.com/

could be interesting. It does not (yet?) ship GRASS by default though.

Cheers

Stefan

···

Cool stuff !

I can see a whole lot of GIS courses becoming streamlined with that…

+1

Dr. Yann Chemin

+33 7 83 85 5234

JRC, Ispra, IT

On Thu, 8 Aug 2019 at 09:59, Stefan Blumentrath <Stefan.Blumentrath@nina.no> wrote:

Hi Vaclav,

Sounds really cool to me! Great initiative!

Of course stuff can always be extended if people feel for it, but it seems to be more than good enough to promote it as is. Just my impression from looking at the third example in Binder.

Cheers

Stefan

grass-dev mailing list
grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org
https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev

5

It has been a couple of years already that I am dreaming of an open source system based on some kind of p2p that will permit people to co-share processing power and disk space for some interactive teaching/studying…

i.e. I would host MOD13Q1 EU related tiles, from 2001 to 2015
somebody else MOD13Q1 EU related tiles, from 2010 to 2019

all “friends” would have access to the data and processing power on both the PCs, with only a part of CPUs accessible, and instantly revokable access by a single button click.

Likewise a meta-access to data could be available in teams pseudo-libraries/APIs…

the more the merrier, of course.

errrh, just dreaming.

···

Dr. Yann Chemin
+33 7 83 85 5234
JRC, Ispra, IT

6

[was: Re: [GRASS-dev] Try GRASS GIS online: Binder - mybinder.org]

On Thu, Aug 8, 2019 at 6:22 AM Stefan Blumentrath <Stefan.Blumentrath@nina.no> wrote:

For courses also: https://cocalc.com/

could be interesting. It does not (yet?) ship GRASS by default though.

The default environment in CoCalc actually does come with GRASS GIS 7.4, just without GUI. It works fine in the command line and notebooks. You can use it also from QGIS which is there with GUI, but the experience, at least with the trial, is not good.

This may not be ideal for the “Try GRASS GIS”, unless there are some additions streamlining the start, but it is hopeful for actually using GRASS GIS.

Note that you can run CoCalc on your own, but I have not tried that yet (needs 15 GB just to get started). At least significant part of it is open source (it is not clear to me if 100%).

Vaclav

7

BTW, now also the GUI is installed.

They replied very quickly to my request… And the size of CoCal is likely due to their apparent concept of offering “everything” by default…

Cheers

Stefan

···

[was: Re: [GRASS-dev] Try GRASS GIS online: Binder - mybinder.org]

On Thu, Aug 8, 2019 at 6:22 AM Stefan Blumentrath <Stefan.Blumentrath@nina.no> wrote:

For courses also: https://cocalc.com/

could be interesting. It does not (yet?) ship GRASS by default though.

The default environment in CoCalc actually does come with GRASS GIS 7.4, just without GUI. It works fine in the command line and notebooks. You can use it also from QGIS which is there with GUI, but the experience, at least with the trial, is not good.

This may not be ideal for the “Try GRASS GIS”, unless there are some additions streamlining the start, but it is hopeful for actually using GRASS GIS.

Note that you can run CoCalc on your own, but I have not tried that yet (needs 15 GB just to get started). At least significant part of it is open source (it is not clear to me if 100%).

Vaclav

8

On Fri, Aug 16, 2019 at 11:14 AM Stefan Blumentrath
<Stefan.Blumentrath@nina.no> wrote:

BTW, now also the GUI is installed.

They replied very quickly to my request… And the size of CoCal is likely due to their apparent concept of offering “everything” by default…

... where would I find GRASS GIS on CoCal? I don't see it (yet) on their page...

Markus

9

It is probably not announced (yet?).

With a CoCalc account, first steps are to create a new project, then add a new x11 Desktop. There, GRASS GIS does not seem to have a button (yet?). But you can start it (including GUI) by typing "grass" in the console...

Cheers
Stefan

-----Original Message-----
From: Markus Neteler <neteler@osgeo.org>
Sent: fredag 16. august 2019 15:41
To: Stefan Blumentrath <Stefan.Blumentrath@nina.no>
Cc: Vaclav Petras <wenzeslaus@gmail.com>; grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [GRASS-dev] Try GRASS GIS online: CoCalc - cocalc.com

On Fri, Aug 16, 2019 at 11:14 AM Stefan Blumentrath <Stefan.Blumentrath@nina.no> wrote:

BTW, now also the GUI is installed.

They replied very quickly to my request… And the size of CoCal is
likely due to their apparent concept of offering “everything” by
default…

... where would I find GRASS GIS on CoCal? I don't see it (yet) on their page...

Markus

10

On Fri, Aug 16, 2019 at 3:41 PM Markus Neteler <neteler@osgeo.org> wrote:

On Fri, Aug 16, 2019 at 11:14 AM Stefan Blumentrath
<Stefan.Blumentrath@nina.no> wrote:
>
> BTW, now also the GUI is installed.
>
> They replied very quickly to my request… And the size of CoCal is likely due to their apparent concept of offering “everything” by default…

... where would I find GRASS GIS on CoCal? I don't see it (yet) on their page...

Meanwhile it is visible:

https://cocalc.com/doc/software-executables.html#Grass

Next: convince them to update to 7.8 :slight_smile:
Stefan, maybe you could contact them again?

Markus

11

Done.
The CoCalc support team is on the issue. I also asked for a launcher button for GRASS GIS...

Still, I have to mention, that Vaclavs Jupyter notebook collection is pretty impressive, and leads interested users right to the point when served with Binder.

For a "Launch Binder" button in the Readme.md on github we would just have to add the following line:
[![Binder](https://mybinder.org/badge_logo.svg)](https://mybinder.org/v2/gh/wenzeslaus/geospatial-modeling-course-jupyter/master)
in the README and with one click people can get to very good example exercises...

But we would probably want have it a bit more prominent (e.g. on the new website) than with just a small button at the top of the repo README...

Wanna look at it yourselv: https://mybinder.org/v2/gh/wenzeslaus/geospatial-modeling-course-jupyter/master

I could have made a PR (and can do so if you like), but I guess Vaclav has some plans in this regards...
So I would at least like to have his OK to use these examples before doing anything more...

Cheers
Stefan

-----Original Message-----
From: Markus Neteler <neteler@osgeo.org>
Sent: søndag 15. desember 2019 23:01
To: Stefan Blumentrath <Stefan.Blumentrath@nina.no>
Cc: grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [GRASS-dev] Try GRASS GIS online: CoCalc - cocalc.com

On Fri, Aug 16, 2019 at 3:41 PM Markus Neteler <neteler@osgeo.org> wrote:

On Fri, Aug 16, 2019 at 11:14 AM Stefan Blumentrath
<Stefan.Blumentrath@nina.no> wrote:
>
> BTW, now also the GUI is installed.
>
> They replied very quickly to my request… And the size of CoCal is
> likely due to their apparent concept of offering “everything” by
> default…

... where would I find GRASS GIS on CoCal? I don't see it (yet) on their page...

Meanwhile it is visible:

https://cocalc.com/doc/software-executables.html#Grass

Next: convince them to update to 7.8 :slight_smile: Stefan, maybe you could contact them again?

Markus

12

Hi

El mié., 18 dic. 2019 19:06, Stefan Blumentrath <Stefan.Blumentrath@nina.no> escribió:

Done.
The CoCalc support team is on the issue. I also asked for a launcher button for GRASS GIS…

Still, I have to mention, that Vaclavs Jupyter notebook collection is pretty impressive, and leads interested users right to the point when served with Binder.

For a “Launch Binder” button in the Readme.md on github we would just have to add the following line:
Binder
in the README and with one click people can get to very good example exercises…

But we would probably want have it a bit more prominent (e.g. on the new website) than with just a small button at the top of the repo README…

In the new website, it would be cool! Please open an issue or PR at: https://github.com/OSGeo/grass-website

The “Learn” section is a good fit :slight_smile:

Wanna look at it yourselv: https://mybinder.org/v2/gh/wenzeslaus/geospatial-modeling-course-jupyter/master

impressive collection! Thanks Vashek! :slight_smile:

Cheers,
Vero

13

On Thu, Dec 19, 2019 at 7:14 AM Veronica Andreo <veroandreo@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi

El mié., 18 dic. 2019 19:06, Stefan Blumentrath <Stefan.Blumentrath@nina.no> escribió:

Done.
The CoCalc support team is on the issue. I also asked for a launcher button for GRASS GIS…

Still, I have to mention, that Vaclavs Jupyter notebook collection is pretty impressive, and leads interested users right to the point when served with Binder.

For a “Launch Binder” button in the Readme.md on github we would just have to add the following line:
Binder
in the README and with one click people can get to very good example exercises…

But we would probably want have it a bit more prominent (e.g. on the new website) than with just a small button at the top of the repo README…

In the new website, it would be cool! Please open an issue or PR at: https://github.com/OSGeo/grass-website

The “Learn” section is a good fit :slight_smile:

Wanna look at it yourselv: https://mybinder.org/v2/gh/wenzeslaus/geospatial-modeling-course-jupyter/master

impressive collection! Thanks Vashek! :slight_smile:

Thanks Vero and Stefan,

The notebooks I meant for the website are:

https://github.com/wenzeslaus/try-grass-in-jupyter
https://github.com/wenzeslaus/try-grass-in-jupyter-with-bash
https://github.com/wenzeslaus/grass-zonal-of-solar (unfinished)

I envisioned the basic one would be on the top level (or close to it) like Download as “Try online” [1] similarly to how Jupyter has it [2] (there it takes you to further selection which we could do too). I maintain three other repos which could be in a more general learning section once polished enough for Binder.

https://github.com/wenzeslaus/geospatial-modeling-course-jupyter
https://github.com/wenzeslaus/Notebook-for-processing-point-clouds-in-GRASS-GIS
https://github.com/wenzeslaus/python-grass-addon

The part which I missed in CoCalc in comparison to Binder were direct links to open a predefined environment, but it seems that CoCalc (just?) solved it by combination of Shared Files and Anonymous sessions. That may also work around the issue of no internet access without purchasing a plan. The obvious plus of CoCalc is that we can have try GUI too (unless mybinder.org just adds CoCalc or xpra-html5 as another option). Both are open source (I actually tried running CoCalc locally), so I’m comfortable with both.

I’ll follow up with another email about rollApp which is another option here. Yet another option is Code Ocean. I’ll try report on that some time later.

Best,

Vaclav

[1] https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-dev/2019-August/093053.html
[2] https://jupyter.org/

Cheers,
Vero

grass-dev mailing list
grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org
https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev