Binder Documentation

Binder allows you to create custom computing environments that can be shared and used by many remote users. It is powered by BinderHub, which is an open-source tool that deploys the Binder service in the cloud. One-such deployment lives here, at mybinder.org, and is free to use. For more information about the mybinder.org deployment and the team that runs it, see About mybinder.org.

This documentation provides information for those who wish to use a pre-existing BinderHub deployment such as mybinder.org. If you’d like documentation on how to create and administer your own BinderHub deployment, see the BinderHub documentation, which guides you through deploying your own BinderHub.

Getting Started with Binder

If you’re just getting started with Binder, see the pages below…

Getting started with Binder

• Getting started with Binder
  • What is the Binder Project?
  • What is a Binder?
  • Preparing a repository for Binder
  • A Binder example
• Common usage patterns in Binder
  • Choose from many open source languages
  • Choose from multiple user interfaces
  • Creating live demonstrations
  • Share computational work or papers
  • Sharing course content and educational material
  • Generating interactive open-source package documentation

How-To guides and Tutorials

The following sections discuss some more in-depth topics on preparing and sharing your Binder repository. How-To guides are shorter, actionable patterns that accomplish something specific. Tutorials are more high-level and thorough, and often cover more conceptual topics.

Note

Binder is a research pilot, whose main goal is to understand usage patterns and workloads for future evolution and development. It is not a service that can be relied on for critical operations.

How to...

• Choose languages for your environment
• Configure the user interface
• Generate custom launch badges for your Binder repository
• Track repository data on mybinder.org
• Share JupyterLab Workspaces with a repository

Tutorials and in-depth guides

• Ensure reproducibility for your Binder repository
  • Pin dependencies
  • Using Dockerfiles
• Use a Dockerfile for your Binder repository
  • When should you use a Dockerfile?
  • Preparing your Dockerfile
  • Ensuring reproducibility with Dockerfiles

Sample repositories and configuration

The following is a list of sample repositories showing off various things you can do with Binder configuration files.

Sample repositories and configuration

• Sample Binder Repositories
  • Managing languages
  • User interfaces
  • System environments
  • Data and reproducibility
  • Dockerfile environments
• Configuration Files
  • environment.yml - Install a Python environment
  • Pipfile and/or Pipfile.lock - Install a Python environment
  • requirements.txt - Install a Python environment
  • setup.py - Install Python packages
  • Project.toml - Install a Julia environment
  • REQUIRE - Install a Julia environment (legacy)
  • install.R - Install an R/RStudio environment
  • apt.txt - Install packages with apt-get
  • DESCRIPTION - Install an R package
  • manifest.xml - Install Stencila
  • postBuild - Run code after installing the environment
  • start - Run code before the user sessions starts
  • runtime.txt - Specifying runtimes
  • default.nix - the nix package manager
  • Dockerfile - Advanced environments

Finally, here is a list of interesting Binder repositories from around the web:

• Interesting Binder repositories from around the web
  • Textbooks and teaching
  • Open source software
  • Scientific research and reproducibility

See the Binder Examples GitHub organization for more Binder repositories demonstrating its functionality.

The Binder Community

These pages cover more advanced topics in the Binder ecosystem, community guidelines for users and developers, and information about the mybinder.org service.

Binder community

• mybinder.org Usage Guidelines
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Status of mybinder.org
• About mybinder.org
• mybinder.org status and reliability
• More information about Binder

Citing Binder

If you publish work that uses Binder, please consider citing the Binder paper from the 2018 SciPy proceedings!

Here is a citation that you can use:

Jupyter et al., "Binder 2.0 - Reproducible, Interactive, Sharable
Environments for Science at Scale." Proceedings of the 17th Python
in Science Conference. 2018. 10.25080/Majora-4af1f417-011