Specify ipython profile qtconsole - ipython

Question

Any guesses on how to specify a specific ipython config from qtconsole?
Without qtconsole:
ipython --profile=my_profile_name
Where my_profile_name is a profile name under your global ipython directory, for ipython kernel options. This lets you specify ipython-specific things, like modules to import on load.
With qtconsole:
jupyter console --config=/./jupyter_qtconsole_config.py
Where you can specify a specific config file to setup general non-ipython-specific qtconsole settings, like font size.
How can you specify set the ipython profile (ideally point it to a file, but may be limited to specifying a global profile name) from qtconsole? ie add the ---profile tag to jupyter qtconsole? Im this link: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/jupyter/kzEws9ZeCFE Matthias mentions specifying a kernel, but that seems overkill.
You can specify profile in a file called 'ipython_kernel_config.py'; perhaps the solution lies in launching qtconsole with --config=jupyter_qtconsole_config.py, and pointing in this file to a custom ipython_kernel_config.py that points to a profile name; not sure how to point to the kernel config file, and no obvious way in the jupyter config docs.

Answer 1

You need to create a custom kernelspec and launch the qtconsole for this specific kernel.
Usually a "kernel" is seen as a language; this is an extremely restrictive view of what a kernel is. In your case what you want to do is have multipel IPython kernels, each launching IPython with a different profile. Here is the more formal definition of what a kernelspec is; but roughly it describe how to start a process.
By using jupyter kernelspec list, I can see I have a Python kernelspec in /usr/local/share/jupyter/kernels/python3; let's have a look at it, and in particular the kernel.json file:
{
"argv": [
"$HOME/anaconda/bin/python",
"-m",
"ipykernel_launcher",
"-f",
"{connection_file}"
],
"display_name": "Python 3",
"language": "python"
}
Now you just need to duplicate all of that, and add "--profile=my_profile_name" in the "argv" list. Don't forget to give a different name to the Folder and and change "display_name": "Python 3" to "display_name": "Python 3 (my_profile)"; once this is available. just launch a qtconsole, a notebook or anything else with this kernel, and you should get your new profile.
You can of course use utilities like a2km to do that programmatically from the command line.