Running OpenMC on MyBinder – Is it possible like Google Colab?

User Support
1

Hello OpenMC community,

I recently found that it’s possible to run OpenMC on Google Colab with some setup, which works quite smoothly for small examples. This made me curious — could we do something similar using MyBinder (https://mybinder.org) so that OpenMC can be launched interactively from a GitHub repository in a reproducible, shareable way?

What I’d like to achieve:

  • Launch an interactive Binder session (Jupyter Notebook / JupyterLab) with OpenMC pre-installed.

  • Run small OpenMC simulations or analyses directly in the browser.

  • Share the GitHub repo so that anyone can reproduce the setup instantly.

What I’ve tried so far:

  • Created a GitHub repo with a requirements.txt / environment.yml including openmc.

  • Added postBuild and apt.txt files for system-level dependencies (like libhdf5-dev, mpi, etc.).

  • The Binder build completes, but OpenMC either isn’t found or fails to install properly.

My questions:

  1. Has anyone successfully run OpenMC on MyBinder?

  2. Are there example repositories or Binder configuration files that demonstrate a working setup?

  3. What’s the recommended way to handle system-level dependencies (HDF5, MPI, compilers) within Binder’s environment?

  4. Would building OpenMC from source during Binder build work, or would it exceed resource limits?

  5. Are there limitations (e.g., compute, runtime, or MPI restrictions) that make MyBinder unsuitable for running OpenMC interactively?

Any tips, working examples, or configuration snippets would be really helpful!
Thanks in advance for your time and guidance.

— Kavya