Contributing

Contributions are welcome, and they are greatly appreciated! Every little bit helps, and credit will always be given.

You can contribute in many ways:

Types of Contributions

Report Bugs

Report bugs at https://github.com/nanograv/enterprise/issues.

If you are 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.

Fix Bugs

Look through the GitHub issues for bugs. Anything tagged with “bug” and “help wanted” is open to whoever wants to implement it.

Implement Features

Look through the GitHub issues for features. Anything tagged with “enhancement” and “help wanted” is open to whoever wants to implement it.

Write Documentation

enterprise could always use more documentation, whether as part of the official enterprise docs, in docstrings, or even on the web in blog posts, articles, and such.

Submit Feedback

The best way to send feedback is to file an issue at https://github.com/nanograv/enterprise/issues.

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 contributions are welcome :)

Get Started!

Ready to contribute? Here’s how to set up enterprise for local development.

Install the dependencies

enterprise relies on a lot of other software to function. If you use the Anaconda distribution of Python, you can get all of this software using conda. First, you install the latest stable version of enterprise, which will come with all of the dependencies. Then you remove enterprise leaving everything else intact. This way you can use your development version of enterprise instead of the stable version. We will also need some additional software that is required to run the tests.

Start with a virtual environment with the extra dependencies required for running tests. In this case it is called ent_dev:

$ conda create -n ent_dev -y -c conda-forge python=3.9 black=22.3.0 flake8 sphinx_rtd_theme pytest-cov
$ conda activate ent_dev

Now install everything else by running the commands:

$ conda install -c conda-forge enterprise-pulsar
$ conda remove enterprise-pulsar --force
$ pip install coverage-conditional-plugin

Get the enterprise source code and get to work!

Fork the enterprise repo on GitHub.

Clone your fork locally:

$ git clone git@github.com:your_name_here/enterprise.git
$ cd enterprise/

Set enterprise/master as upstream remote:

$ git remote add upstream https://github.com/nanograv/enterprise.git

You can then pull changes from the upstream master branch with:

$ git pull upstream master

This is how you set up your fork for local development:
Note

You will need to have tempo2 and suitesparse installed before running these commands.

If you installed the dependencies via conda, you are good to go!

If you set up a conda virtual environment with the dependencies already, you can add your local fork of enterprise to it by running:
$ pip install -e .
If you manually installed the dependencies, this will make and activate a Python3 virtual env with your local fork of enterprise:
$ make init $ source .enterprise/bin/activate
Create a branch for local development:
```
$ git checkout -b name-of-your-bugfix-or-feature
```
Now you can make your changes locally.
When you’re done making changes, check that your changes pass flake8 and the tests, including testing other Python versions with tox (tox not implemented yet). Also check that any new docs are formatted correctly:
```
$ make test
$ make docs
```
To get flake8 and tox, just pip install them into your virtualenv.

Commit your changes and push your branch to GitHub:

$ git add .
$ git commit -m "Your detailed description of your changes."
$ git push origin name-of-your-bugfix-or-feature

Submit a pull request through the GitHub website.

Pull Request Guidelines

Before you submit a pull request, check that it meets these guidelines:

The pull request should include tests.
If the pull request adds functionality, the docs should be updated. Put your new functionality into a function with a docstring.
The pull request should work for all supported versions of Python: 3.8, 3.9, 3.10, 3.11, and 3.12. You can see the progress of the tests in the Checks tab of your GitHub pull request.

Tips

To run a subset of tests:

$ python -m unittest tests.test_enterprise

To track and checkout another user’s branch:

$ git remote add other-user-username https://github.com/other-user-username/enterprise.git
$ git fetch other-user-username
$ git checkout --track -b branch-name other-user-username/branch-name