You should only need to do this step once
First fork the lenstronomy repository. A fork is your own remote copy of the repository on GitHub. To create a fork:
- Go to the lenstronomy GitHub Repository
- Click the Fork button (in the top-right-hand corner)
- Choose where to create the fork, typically your personal GitHub account
Next clone your fork. Cloning creates a local copy of the repository on your computer to work with. To clone your fork:
git clone https://github.com/<your-account>/lenstronomy.git
Finally add the lenstronomy
repository as a remote. This will allow you to fetch changes made to the codebase. To add the skypyproject
remote:
cd lenstronomy
git remote add lenstronomyproject https://github.com/sibirrer/lenstronomy.git
To enable that your new code gets accessible by python also outside of the development environment, make sure all previous versions of lenstronomy are uninstalled and then install your version of lenstronomy (aka add the software to the python path)
cd lenstronomy
python setup.py develop --user
Alternatively, create virtual environments for the development (recommended for advanced usage with multiple branches).
Create a branch off the lenstronomyproject
main branch. Working on unique branches for each new feature simplifies the development, review and merge processes by maintining logical separation. To create a feature branch:
git fetch lenstronomyproject
git checkout -b <your-branch-name> lenstronomyproject/main
Write the new code you would like to contribute and commit it to the feature branch on your local repository. Ideally commit small units of work often with clear and descriptive commit messages describing the changes you made. To commit changes to a file:
git add file_containing_your_contribution
git commit -m 'Your clear and descriptive commit message'
Push the contributions in your feature branch to your remote fork on GitHub:
git push origin <your-branch-name>
Note: The first time you push a feature branch you will probably need to use --set-upstream origin
to link to your remote fork:
git push --set-upstream origin <your-branch-name>
When you feel that work on your new feature is complete, you should create a Pull Request. This will propose your work to be merged into the main lenstronomy repository.
- Go to lenstronomy Pull Requests
- Click the green New pull request button
- Click compare across forks
- Confirm that the base fork is
sibirrer/lenstronomy
and the base branch ismain
- Confirm the head fork is
<your-account>/lenstronomy
and the compare branch is<your-branch-name>
- Give your pull request a title and fill out the the template for the description
- Click the green Create pull request button
As you work on your feature, new commits might be made to the sibirrer/lenstronomy
main branch. You will need to update your branch with these new commits before your pull request can be accepted. You can achieve this in a few different ways:
- If your pull request has no conflicts, click Update branch
- If your pull request has conflicts, click Resolve conflicts, manually resolve the conflicts and click Mark as resolved
- merge the
lenstronomyproject
main branch from the command line:git fetch lenstronomyproject git merge lenstronomyproject/main
- rebase your feature branch onto the
lenstronomy
main branch from the command line:git fetch lenstronomyproject git rebase lenstronomyproject/main
Warning: It is bad practice to rebase commits that have already been pushed to a remote such as your fork. Rebasing creates new copies of your commits that can cause the local and remote branches to diverge. git push --force
will overwrite the remote branch with your newly rebased local branch. This is strongly discouraged, particularly when working on a shared branch where you could erase a collaborators commits.
For more information about resolving conflicts see the GitHub guides:
- Resolving a merge conflict on GitHub
- Resolving a merge conflict using the command line
- About Git rebase
More information regarding the usage of GitHub can be found in the GitHub Guides.
Before your pull request can be merged into the codebase, it will be reviewed by one of the lenstronomy developers and required to pass a number of automated checks. Below are a minimum set of guidelines for developers to follow:
- lenstronomy is compatible with Python>=3.5 (see setup.cfg). lenstronomy does not support backwards compatibility with Python 2.x;
six
,__future__
and2to3
should not be used. - All contributions should follow the PEP8 Style Guide for Python Code. We recommend using flake8 to check your code for PEP8 compliance.
- Importing lenstronomy should only depend on having NumPy, SciPy and Astropy installed.
- Code is grouped into submodules e.g. LensModel, LightModel and ImSim. There is also a Util submodule for general utility functions.
- For more information see the Astropy Coding Guidelines
Pull requests will require existing unit tests to pass before they can be merged. Additionally, new unit tests should be written for all new public methods and functions. Unit tests for each submodule are contained in subdirectories called tests
and you can run them locally using python setup.py test
. For more information see the Astropy Testing Guidelines.
All public classes, methods and functions require docstrings. You can build documentation locally by installing sphinx-astropy and calling python setup.py build_docs
. Docstrings should include the following sections:
- Description
- Parameters
- Notes
- Examples
- References
For more information see the Astropy guide to Writing Documentation.
This page is inspired by the Contributions guidelines of the Skypy project.