CONTRIBUTING.md

Contribute as a user

The documentation, examples and tutorials should be understandable and the code bug-free. As all users have different backgrounds, you may not understand everything or encounter bugs. In that case, PLEASE raise an issue here.

Consider labeling the issue with an appropriate label.

Contribute as a developer

If you instead want to contribute new features or fix bugs yourself, we are more than happy.

Please raise an issue. Issue branches are created automatically on issue assignments.

See workflow definition and configuration file for customization.

Branch creation is skipped for issues with the label "question".

Once your feature is ready, create a pull request and check if the pipeline succeeds. Assign a reviewer before merging. Once review is finished, you can merge.

Before implementing or modifying modules, classes or functions, please read the following page.

Style guides

Coding style guide

We use PEP8 as a coding style guide. Some IDEs (like PyCharm) automatically show you code that is not in PEP8. If you don't have such an IDE, please read this page to get a better understanding of it.

Committing style guide

For committing style guide please use Conventional Commits 1.0.0. For more details how to structure your commits please visit this page.

Documentation

All created or modified functions should be documented properly. Try to follow the structure already present. If possible, write a little doctest example into the docstring to make clear to the user what the desired output of your function is. All non-self-explanatory lines of code should include a comment. Although you will notice that not all docstring are already in this style, we use the google-style for docstrings, e.g.

from typing import Union

def foo(dummy: str , dummy2: Union[str, int]):
    """
    Describe what the function does in here.
    The blank line below is necessary for the doc to render nicely.
    
    Args:
        dummy (str): Any parameter description
        dummy (str, int): A variable that may have two types.
    """

Furthermore, we use type annotations as this helps users to automatically identify wrong usage of functions. In a further step, type annotations may also help to accelerate your code. For more details please check the official documentation on type hints.

Unit-Tests

Especially when creating new functions or classes, you have to add a unit-test function. Tests are located in the \tests directory. Every file that includes tests has a test_ prefix. Open the appropriate module where you want to write a test and add an appropriate function. When you are adding tests to an existing test file, it is also recommended that you study the other tests in that file; it will teach you which precautions you have to take to make your tests robust and portable. If the corresponding module does not exist, then you should create a new module with test_ prefix and appropriate name.

If you are not familiar with unit-tests, here is a quick summary:

• Test as many things as possible. Even seemingly silly tests like correct input-format help prevent future problems for new users.
• Use the self.assertSOMETHING functions provided by unittest. This way a test failure is presented correctly. An error inside your test function will not be handled as a failure but as an error.
• If the success of your test depends on the used development environment, you can use decorators like skip(), skipif(numpy.__version__<(1, 0), "not supported with your numpy version"), etc.
• setUp() and tearDown() are called before and after each test. Use these functions to define parameters used in every test, or to close applications like Dymola once a test is completed.
• See the unittest-documentation for further information.

You can check your work by running all tests before committing to git.

Pylint

With pylint we try to keep our code clean.
Here you can read more about Pylint and how to use it.