The following are instructions on how to get an IPython development environment up and running without having to install anything on your host machine, other than boot2docker and docker.

Install boot2docker. There are multiple ways to install, depending on your environment. See the boot2docker docs.

On a Mac OS X host with Homebrew installed:

$ brew install boot2docker docker

$ boot2docker init

$ boot2docker up

The boot2docker CLI communicates with the docker daemon on the boot2docker VM. To do this, we must set some environment variables, e.g. DOCKER_HOST,

$ $(boot2docker shellinit)

To view the IP address of the VM:

$ boot2docker ip
192.168.59.103

$ git clone --recursive https://github.com/ipython/ipython.git

Use the Dockerfile in the cloned ipython directory to build a Docker image.

$ cd ipython
$ docker build --rm -t ipython .

Run a container using the new image. We mount the entire ipython source tree on the host into the container at /srv/ipython to enable changes we make to the source on the host immediately reflected in the container.

# change to the root of the git clone
$ cd ipython
$ docker run -it --rm -p 8888:8888 --workdir /srv/ipython --name ipython-dev -v `pwd`:/srv/ipython ipython /bin/bash

To list the running container from another shell on the host:

$ $(boot2docker shellinit)
$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND             CREATED             STATUS              PORTS                    NAMES
f6065f206519        ipython             "/bin/bash"         1 minutes ago       Up 1 minutes        0.0.0.0:8888->8888/tcp   ipython-dev    

Once in the container, you'll need to uninstall the ipython package and re-install in editable mode to enable your dev changes to be reflected in your environment.

container $ pip uninstall ipython

# pip install ipython in editable mode 
container $ cd /srv
container $ ls
ipython
container $ pip install -e ipython

container $ ipython notebook --no-browser --ip=*

On your host, run the following command to get the IP of the boot2docker VM if you forgot:

# on host
$ boot2docker ip
192.168.59.103

Then visit it in your browser:

# browser
http://192.168.59.103:8888

As a shortcut on a Mac, you can run the following in a terminal window (or make it a bash alias):

$ open http://$(boot2docker ip 2>/dev/null):8888