Reset an IPython kernel without restarting

Question

Is there a way of programmatically reset an IPython kernel without restarting it?

Currently I am calling KernelManager.restart_kernel but that is quite slow.

The purpose of this is to isolate unit tests in a py.test plugin for using Notebook cells as unit tests. If you have other ideas to achieve this I'd love suggestions. The code is here:

https://github.com/zonca/pytest-ipynb/blob/master/pytest_ipynb/plugin.py#L100

Answer 1

I used the %reset IPython magic function instead of restarting the kernel. That removes all the variables but does not perform again the imports. That is suitable for my application.

See IPython docs: http://ipython.readthedocs.org/en/stable/interactive/magics.html?highlight=magic#magic-reset