[BUG] - Cannot installing JupyterLab extensions on deployments without swapping docker image

[krassowski]

Describe the bug

Recent PR https://github.com/nebari-dev/nebari/pull/2191 disabled global use of pip. The default Extension Manager in JupyterLab 4.0+ uses PyPI as registry and pip as underlying command to install extensions (although for extensions which are frontend only it really is language and packager agnostic).

It is currently impossible to install a JupyterLab extension.

• users cannot install extensions at all
• deployment operators/admins have to modify the docker image to install an extension

Three weeks ago I opened https://github.com/nebari-dev/nebari-docker-images/pull/120 to add jupyterlab-favourites which is needed for one of the deployments. Well actually, we just want to evaluate it. It should not take months to evaluate a single extension.

This is what user sees today when they try to use the Extension Manager:

Expected behavior

Either:

• the default Extension Manager (PyPI-backed) works, or
• jupyterlab-conda-store provides custom Extension Manager which works in the constraints of nebari (see https://github.com/conda-incubator/jupyterlab-conda-store/issues/40 proposal), or
• there is at least some mechanism for admins to install extensions nebari-config.yml?) and the Readonly Extension Manager is used to avoid confusing the user

OS and architecture in which you are running Nebari

latest

How to Reproduce the problem?

Try to install an extension

Command output

No response

Versions and dependencies used.

No response

Compute environment

None

Integrations

No response

Anything else?

No response