Contributing

Bug reports, feature suggestions, and other contributions are greatly appreciated! pysat is a community-driven project and welcomes both feedback and contributions.

Come join us on Slack! An invitation to the pysat workspace is available in the ‘About’ section of the pysat GitHub Repository. Development meetings are generally held fortnightly.

Short version

Submit bug reports and feature requests at GitHub
Make pull requests to the develop branch

Bug reports

When reporting a bug please include:

Your operating system name and version
Any details about your local setup that might be helpful in troubleshooting
Detailed steps to reproduce the bug

Feature requests and feedback

The best way to send feedback is to file an issue at GitHub.

If you are proposing a feature:

Explain in detail how it would work.
Keep the scope as narrow as possible, to make it easier to implement.
Remember that this is a volunteer-driven project, and that code contributions are welcome :)

Development

To set up pysat for local development:

Fork pysat on GitHub.

Clone your fork locally:

git clone git@github.com:your_name_here/pysat.git

Create a branch for local development:
```
git checkout -b name-of-your-bugfix-or-feature
```
Now you can make your changes locally.

Tests for new instruments are performed automatically. Tests for custom functions should be added to the appropriately named file in pysat/tests. For example, custom functions for the time utilities are tested in pysat/tests/test_utils_time.py. If no test file exists, then you should create one. This testing uses pytest, which will run tests on any python file in the test directory that starts with test. Classes must begin with Test, and methods must begin with test as well.
When you’re done making changes, run all the checks to ensure that nothing is broken on your local system, as well as check for flake8 compliance:
```
pytest -vs --flake8 pysat
```
Update/add documentation (in docs), if relevant
Add your name to the .zenodo.json file as an author
Commit your changes:
```
git add .
git commit -m "AAA: Brief description of your changes"
```
Where AAA is a standard shorthand for the type of change (eg, BUG or DOC). pysat follows the numpy development workflow, see the discussion there for a full list of this shorthand notation.
Once you are happy with the local changes, push to Github:
```
git push origin name-of-your-bugfix-or-feature
```
Note that each push will trigger the Continuous Integration workflow.
Submit a pull request through the GitHub website. Pull requests should be made to the develop branch.

Pull Request Guidelines

If you need some code review or feedback while you’re developing the code, just make a pull request. Pull requests should be made to the develop branch.

For merging, you should:

Include an example for use
Add a note to CHANGELOG.md about the changes
Update the author list in zenodo.json if applicable
Ensure that all checks passed (current checks include Github Actions and Coveralls)

If you don’t have all the necessary Python versions available locally or have trouble building all the testing environments, you can rely on GitHub Actions to run the tests for each change you add in the pull request. Because testing here will delay tests by other developers, please ensure that the code passes all tests on your local system first.

Project Style Guidelines

In general, pysat follows PEP8 and numpydoc guidelines. Pytest runs the unit and integration tests, flake8 checks for style, and sphinx-build performs documentation tests. However, there are certain additional style elements that have been adopted to ensure the project maintains a consistent coding style. These include:

Line breaks should occur before a binary operator (ignoring flake8 W503)
Combine long strings using join
Preferably break long lines on open parentheses rather than using \
Use no more than 80 characters per line
Avoid using Instrument class key attribute names as unrelated variable names: platform, name, tag, and inst_id
The pysat logger is imported into each sub-module and provides status updates at the info and warning levels (as appropriate)
Several dependent packages have common nicknames, including:
- import datetime as dt
- import numpy as np
- import pandas as pds
- import xarray as xr
When incrementing a timestamp, use dt.timedelta instead of pds.DateOffset when possible to reduce program runtime
All classes should have __repr__ and __str__ functions
Docstrings use Note instead of Notes
Try to avoid creating a try/except statement where except passes
Use setup and teardown in test classes
Use pytest parametrize in test classes when appropriate
Use pysat testing utilities when appropriate
Provide testing class methods with informative failure statements and descriptive, one-line docstrings
Block and inline comments should use proper English grammar and punctuation with the exception of single sentences in a block, which may then omit the final period
When casting is necessary, use np.int64 and np.float64 to ensure operating system agnosticism

Ecosystem Style Guidelines

If you are creating a new project that you wish to incorporate into the pysat ecosystem: welcome! We have a template repository that contains many of the common documents needed for a new project that you can use to get started. You may find this helpful when getting started, though this repository is under active development.