ANandrecosta·Jul 7, 2023
nbstripout[0] does that and installs a pre-commit hook
[0] -- https://github.com/kynan/nbstripout
In Git and Jupyter Notebooks Guidekynan
nbstripout
Python2017–2023
kynan / nbstripout
nbstripout
strip output from Jupyter and IPython notebooks
11Distinct people
12Mentions
2Explicit recommenders
1.5KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
strip output from Jupyter and IPython notebooks
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
For .ipynb notebooks, I highly recommend using nbstripout [0] to strip the Jupiter output before committing the notebooks to the repository (thus making the diffs sane). You…
karlicoss used a recommendation phrase. 3 indexed comments match. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.
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Mentions over time
HN mentions by year12 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2017-04-04 16:22:59 UTC to 2023-07-07 16:36:14 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 0 | 5 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
12 sourcesI used something as a precommit hook in the past that removed plots and other rendered content and only kept text and code in git index. I'm almost sure it was https://github.com/kynan/nbstripout but it's been a while and I could be wrong.
Once the hook was in place git diff worked well enough to not need any other diffing tool.
In Ask HN: Are there any good Diff tools for Jupyter Notebooks?You can use it with source control, I do it for about 18 notebooks I use on a daily basis:
https://github.com/kynan/nbstripout
In NumPy 1.20For .ipynb notebooks, I highly recommend using nbstripout [0] to strip the Jupiter output before committing the notebooks to the repository (thus making the diffs sane).
You can also set it up as a 'filter', so it automatically runs before any git operations, whether it's add, commit, diff or an interactive rebase.
[0] https://github.com/kynan/nbstripout
In Why we do machine learning engineering with YAML, not notebooksI recommend nbstripout https://github.com/kynan/nbstripout
It eases most of the pain regarding version control. You can use it as a 'git filter', so only inputs would be shown in diffs and committed (and also works with interactive adding!), while keeping outputs in your working tree.
In What’s wrong with computational notebooks?You bet. I built ReviewNB[1] specifically for Jupyter Notebook code reviews.
There's also,
- nbstripout[2] for stripping outputs automatically before every commit
- nbdime[3] for diff'ing notebooks locally
- jupytext[4] for converting notebooks to markdown and vice-a-versa
[1] https://www.reviewnb.com/
[2] https://github.com/kynan/nbstripout
[3] https://github.com/jupyter/nbdime
[4] https://github.com/mwouts/jupytext
In Why is version control in Jupyter notebooks so hard?nbstripout [1] is my favorite tool for this. Installing it in your Git repo is 2 lines:
$ pip install --upgrade nbstripout # install nbstripout bin
$ nbstripout --install # install Git hook in current repo
Then, any .ipynb files that you check in will have their output stripped in the index (without affecting your working copy).
(Surprised it's not mentioned in the article.)
[1] https://github.com/kynan/nbstripout
In How to Version-Control Jupyter NotebooksI would encourage everyone to use https://github.com/kynan/nbstripout before commiting.
In JupyterCon: I don't like Notebooks [slides]Not OP, but I can recommend the handy https://github.com/kynan/nbstripout which acts as a git filter which makes version control ignore cell outputs.
With that approach, though notebooks are clean they're still fairly poor for easily evaluating diffs between versions. If code review / diffs are more important than preserving the notebook, then you could use a post save hook to convert notebook input to a .py file and output to .html:
https://towardsdatascience.com/version-control-for-jupyter-n...
In The Future of Notebooks: Lessons from JupyterConWell, good question. The file format for Jupyter is not ideal for 'code craftsmanship', as pointed out by another comment. There are utilities to strip out some of the metadata from the Jupyter files, such as rendered output and run counters, but that is a trade-off to be decided by your team:
https://github.com/kynan/nbstripout
In MLflow: An Open Source Machine Learning PlatformHere is a pip package called "nbstripout" which tell git to ignore notebook output: https://github.com/kynan/nbstripout It can really help establish good practice in a project with little effort:
pip install --upgrade nbstripout
nbstripout --install
In JupyterLab is ready for usersUse nbstripout[0] as a git filter. Then you have seamless git control of notebooks. There's talk of automatically saving code only separate versions in future releases.
[0] https://github.com/kynan/nbstripout
In Jupyter Notebook 5.0