Use pixi for running dashboard locally

[MridulS]

This should be much leaner than asking people to setup docker locally and running a container just for the dashboard.

[akshayshanker]

Thanks for putting this together.

Before I proceed could we confirm our terminology so we’re all on the same page? @llorracc @alanlujan91 @mnwhite

• “Notebooks.” In this context I’m referring to the standard Jupyter notebooks that run Python code locally on a user’s machine. From the PR description, it appears pixi is being used solely to create an environment in which these notebooks can be executed without Docker. Please confirm that this is the only scope of the current PR.

• “Interactive dashboard / panel.” Separately, we maintain (or plan to build) an interactive web panel that displays pre‑computed results and lets users update figures on the fly through a GUI. This layer is typically served with Voilà/voici (or a similar framework) and is distinct from the raw notebooks mentioned above. These interactive dashboards can be embedded in notebooks but do not depend even on a local python installation. My understanding is that this dashboard is not touched by the pixi PR—correct?

—Akshay

[MridulS]

Please confirm that this is the only scope of the current PR.

Yes pixi is just a dependency and env manager, think of it like conda environments.

My understanding is that this dashboard is not touched by the pixi PR—correct?

Yes, it just adds the command to start the voila server as a pixi task so people don't have to remember exact incantations of the command, just pixi run dashboard.

[MridulS]

You can ignore the dump of lock file (or I can even remove it from the PR), it just helps with an even faster start up of the dashboard as the lock file already has the resolved environment.