Switch default cdn from unpkg to jsdelivr

[mlucool]

In case someone is having issues, there is a critical regression with unpkg: mjackson/unpkg#51

[jasongrout]

Is this why I'm seeing errors loading fontawesome? Other than that, are there other places you see errors from this?

[MartinKolarik]

@jasongrout yes, it affects all links with a query string, font awesome is one of them.

If you'd like, you are welcome to use jsDelivr CDN, which works in a similar fashion but is strongly focused on production usage and never breaks any existing links.

[jasongrout]

Thanks, we'll take that into consideration. As you can probably guess, we are extremely conservative in choosing a CDN to be used in our official sources.

Checking into jsdelivr...

[MartinKolarik]

As you can probably guess, we are extremely conservative in choosing a CDN to be used in our official sources.

That makes sense 😄 let me know if you have any questions or need help... jsDelivr serves more than 10 times the traffic of unpkg so I'm sure it would work for you as well.

[jasongrout]

Thanks! Yes, I'm seeing lots of positive things about jsdelivr as I look around. And I suppose any hesitation about security is resolved by using SRI more consistently.

[MartinKolarik]

Yes, we're very serious about security too, but SRI definitely helps in that regard.

[jasongrout]

More background: it seems that jsdelivr was not an option when we were looking for CDNs last, but in May implemented the automated npm CDN part we wanted from unpkg: jsdelivr/jsdelivr#13136

It does seem to me that it makes sense to switch to jsdelivr, given that unpkg is having issues, jsdelivr is more mature and (according to the above and other info I'm finding) serves much more traffic, and given the problem above.

@SylvainCorlay, @maartenbreddels, @pbugnion, @mwcraig, @vidartf - do any of you have opinions about switching from unpkg.com to jsdelivr for our hardcoded CDN? It'd basically just be switching the domain name, as the URLs and features are essentially equivalent.

[maartenbreddels]

No objections, I'd say if we need to switch the time is now.

[jasongrout]

I'm testing again to see if the fontawesome on unpkg is still causing problems.

[mwcraig]

I don't have an opinion....

…

On Aug 15, 2017, 9:19 AM -0500, Jason Grout ***@***.***>, wrote: More background: it seems that jsdelivr was not an option when we were looking for CDNs last, but in May implemented the automated npm CDN part we wanted from unpkg: jsdelivr/jsdelivr#13136 It does seem to me that it makes sense to switch to jsdelivr, given that unpkg is having issues, jsdelivr is more mature and (according to the above and other info I'm finding) serves much more traffic, and given the problem above. @SylvainCorlay, @maartenbreddels, @pbugnion, @mwcraig, @vidartf - do any of you have opinions about switching from unpkg.com to jsdelivr for our hardcoded CDN? It'd basically just be switching the domain name, as the URLs and features are essentially equivalent. — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or mute the thread.

[SylvainCorlay]

Same. unpkg is supported by a large organization though.

[jasongrout]

Same. unpkg is supported by a large organization though.

Where do you see that? I don't see it on https://unpkg.com/#/about (other than donations of services).

In any case, jsdelivr's sponsor list is also pretty impressive: http://www.jsdelivr.com/about

[jasongrout]

I'm testing again to see if the fontawesome on unpkg is still causing problems.

I saw problems with fontawesome at some point, but I don't see problems now - possibly because we've rewritten how the embedding works. Now, we directly reference fontawesome fonts served up as part of the html-manager /dist assets, and there is no ?v parameter, just a version number for the html manager.

So this doesn't seem to be the problem that I thought it was. Given our proximity to a release, I now recommend we take a look at this after our release, if we want to switch to jsdelivr because of a bigger network, etc.

[maartenbreddels]

👍

[tarzzz]

(I can move it into its own issue if it is unrelated):

Does it makes sense to be able to set custom CDN (in the form of an environment variable)?

We have a use case where we need to run the notebooks behind a proxy. Making the CDN configurable will be helpful in ensuring that the widgets work behind the network, where requesting resources from unpkg.com is not feasible.

I am happy to do the work needed to get this implemented in ipywidgets.

[jasongrout]

I think now is a good time to switch the default to jsdelivr for ipywidgets 8.0

[mlucool]

Does it makes sense to be able to set custom CDN (in the form of an environment variable)?

This would be helpful as part of this work.

[jasongrout]

Does it makes sense to be able to set custom CDN (in the form of an environment variable)?

This would be helpful as part of this work.

That is already done and released in #2185.

[jasongrout]

As an update, it appears that jsdelivr is still much larger than unpkg (like 4x more websites). jsDelivr has also apparently been chosen to be the cdn for bootstrap. All in all, I think it's still a good choice to migrate to it.