Running shell scripts before kernel starts

[aglebov]

I have a shell script that sets up some environment variable (notably PYTHONPATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH) that I would like to run before the Jupyter kernel starts. I cannot easily modify the script as it is used by other applications.

I'm aware of the Run Startup Commands setting, however it seems to only support Python commands that run after the kernel is started, so setting PYTHONPATH has no effect on sys.path.

Is there a way to run a script before the kernel process is launched, or perhaps a good alternative way to achieve the same result?

[aglebov]

In fact, I think I've found a reasonable solution: start a Jupyter server outside VS Code and connect to it from VS Code.