Contributing to cerf

Whether you find a typo in the documentation, find a bug, or want to develop functionality that you think will make cerf more robust, you are welcome to contribute!

Opening issues

If you find a bug or would like to contribute a new feature, please open an issue and select the template that fits your need.

Contribution workflow

The following is the recommended workflow for contributing to cerf:

  1. Fork the cerf repository and then clone it locally:

git clone https://github.com/<your-user-name>/cerf

Cloning the repository will give you access to the test suite. It is important to install the package in development mode before running tests. This will give you the flexibility to make changes in the code without having to rebuild your package before running tests. To do this run the following from your terminal in the cerf directory containing your setup.py script:

python setup.py develop

  1. Create a branch for your changes

git checkout -b bug/some-bug

# or

git checkout -b feature/some-feature

  1. Add your recommended changes and ensure all tests pass, then commit your changes:

    Ensure your tests pass locally before pushing to your remote branch where GitHub actions will launch CI services to build the package, run the test suite, and evaluate code coverage. To do this, ensure that pytest has been installed then navigate to the root of your cloned directory (e.g., <my-path>/cerf) and simply execute pytest in the terminal.

git add <my-file-name>

git commit -m '<my short message>'

Changes to the documenation can be made in the cerf/docs/source directory containing the RST files. To view your changes, ensure you have the development dependencies of cerf installed and run the following from the cerf/docs/source directory:

make html

This will generate your new documentation in a directory named cerf/docs/build/html. You can open the index.html in your browser to view the documentation site locally. If your changes are merged into the main branch of cerf, changes in your documentation will go live as well.

  1. Push your changes to the remote

git push origin <my-branch-name>

  1. Submit a pull request with the following information:

  • Purpose: The reason for your pull request in short

  • Summary: A description of the environment you are using (OS, Python version, etc.), logic, any caveats, and a summary of changes that were made.

  1. If approved, your pull request will be merged into the main branch by a cerf admin and a release will be conducted subsequently. cerf uses semantic naming for versioned releases. Each release receives a DOI via a linked Zenodo service automatically.