Here we explain how to contribute to a project that adopted this template. Actually, you can use this same scheme when contributing to this template. If you are completely new to git this might not be the best beginner tutorial, but will be very good still ;-)

You will notice that the text that appears is a mirror of the CONTRIBUTING.rst file. You can also point your community to that file (or the docs) to guide them in the steps required to interact with you project.

Contributing

How to contribute to this project.

Fork this repository

Fork this repository before contributing.

Clone your fork

Next, clone your fork to your local machine, keep it up to date with the upstream, and update the online fork with those updates.

git clone https://github.com/YOUR-USERNAME/libfuncpy.git
cd libfuncpy
git remote add upstream git://github.com/joaomcteixeira/libfuncpy.git
git fetch upstream
git merge upstream/main
git pull origin main

Install for developers

Create a dedicated Python environment where to develop the project.

If you are using pip follow the official instructions on Installing packages using pip and virtual environments, most likely what you want is:

python3 -m venv libfuncpy
source libfuncpy/bin/activate

If you are using Anaconda go for:

conda create --name libfuncpy python=3.7
conda activate libfuncpy

Where libfuncpy is the name you wish to give to the environment dedicated to this project.

Either under pip or conda, install the package in develop mode, and also tox. Note, here I assume our project has no dependencies.

python setup.py develop
pip install tox

This configuration, together with the use of the src folder layer, guarantee that you will always run the code after installation. Also, thanks to the develop flag, any changes in the code will be automatically reflected in the installed version.

Make a new branch

From the main branch create a new branch where to develop the new code.

git checkout main
git checkout -b new_branch

Develop the feature and keep regular pushes to your fork with comprehensible commit messages.

git status
git add (the files you want)
git commit -m (add a nice commit message)
git push origin new_branch

While you are developing, you can execute tox as needed to run your unittests or inspect lint, etc. See the last section of this page.

Update CHANGELOG

Update the changelog file under docs/CHANGELOG.rst with an explanatory bullet list of your contribution. Add that list right after the main title and before the last version subtitle:

Changelog
=========

* here goes my new additions
* explain them shortly and well

vX.X.X (1900-01-01)
-------------------

Also add your name to the authors list at docs/AUTHORS.rst.

Pull Request

Once you are finished, you can Pull Request you additions to the main repository, and engage with the community. Please read the PULLREQUEST.rst guidelines first, you will see them when you open a PR.

Before submitting a Pull Request, verify your development branch passes all tests as described bellow . If you are developing new code you should also implement new test cases.

Uniformed Tests with tox

Thanks to Tox we can have a unified testing platform where all developers are forced to follow the same rules and, above all, all tests occur in a controlled Python environment.

With Tox, the testing setup can be defined in a configuration file, the tox.ini, which contains all the operations that are performed during the test phase. Therefore, to run the unified test suite, developers just need to execute tox, provided tox is installed in the Python environment in use.

pip install tox
# or
conda install tox -c conda-forge

Before creating a Pull Request from your branch, certify that all the tests pass correctly by running:

tox

These are exactly the same tests that will be performed online in the Github Actions.

Also, you can run individual environments if you wish to test only specific functionalities, for example:

tox -e lint  # code style
tox -e build  # packaging
tox -e docs  # only builds the documentation
tox -e prreqs  # special requirements before Pull Request
tox -e py37  # performs pytest in Python 3.7 environment (it should
be installed)