CONTRIBUTING.md

   especially if your project is open source. The text should be very similar to
   this template, but there are a few extra contents that you might decide to
   also include, like mentioning labels of your issue tracker or automated
   releases.

Contributing

Welcome to ellalgo contributor's guide.

This document focuses on getting any potential contributor familiarized with the development processes, but [other kinds of contributions] are also appreciated.

If you are new to using [git] or have never collaborated in a project previously, please have a look at [contribution-guide.org]. Other resources are also listed in the excellent [guide created by FreeCodeCamp] [^contrib1].

Please notice, all users and contributors are expected to be open, considerate, reasonable, and respectful. When in doubt, [Python Software Foundation's Code of Conduct] is a good reference in terms of behavior guidelines.

Issue Reports

If you experience bugs or general issues with ellalgo, please have a look on the issue tracker. If you don't see anything useful there, please feel free to fire an issue report.

Please don't forget to include the closed issues in your search. Sometimes a solution was already reported, and the problem is considered solved.

New issue reports should include information about your programming environment (e.g., operating system, Python version) and steps to reproduce the problem. Please try also to simplify the reproduction steps to a very minimal example that still illustrates the problem you are facing. By removing other factors, you help us to identify the root cause of the issue.

Documentation Improvements

You can help improve ellalgo docs by making them more readable and coherent, or by adding missing information and correcting mistakes.

ellalgo documentation uses [Sphinx] as its main documentation compiler. This means that the docs are kept in the same repository as the project code, and that any documentation update is done in the same way was a code contribution.

The documentation uses MyST (Markdown with Sphinx extensions).

:::{tip} Please notice that the [GitHub web interface] provides a quick way of propose changes in ellalgo's files. While this mechanism can be tricky for normal code contributions, it works perfectly fine for contributing to the docs, and can be quite handy.

  If you are interested in trying this method out, please navigate to
  the `docs` folder in the source [repository], find which file you
  would like to propose changes and click in the little pencil icon at the
  top, to open [GitHub's code editor]. Once you finish editing the file,
  please write a message in the form at the bottom of the page describing
  which changes have you made and what are the motivations behind them and
  submit your proposal.

:::

When working on documentation changes in your local machine, you can
compile them using [tox] :

tox -e docs

and use Python's built-in web server for a preview in your web browser
(`http://localhost:8000`):

python3 -m http.server --directory 'docs/_build/html'

## Code Contributions

For information about `ellalgo`'s internals, see the [AGENTS.md](AGENTS.md) file which contains:
- Package structure and organization
- Type system and naming conventions
- Testing patterns
- Code style guidelines

### Submit an issue

Before you work on any non-trivial code contribution it's best to first create
a report in the [issue tracker] to start a discussion on the subject.
This often provides additional considerations and avoids unnecessary work.

### Create an environment

Before you start coding, we recommend creating an isolated [virtual environment]
to avoid any problems with your installed Python packages.
This can easily be done via either [virtualenv]:

virtualenv source /bin/activate

or [Miniconda]:

conda create -n ellalgo python=3 six virtualenv pytest pytest-cov conda activate ellalgo

### Clone the repository

1. Create an user account on GitHub if you do not already have one.

2. Fork the project [repository]: click on the _Fork_ button near the top of the
   page. This creates a copy of the code under your account on GitHub.

3. Clone this copy to your local disk:

git clone git@github.com:YourLogin/ellalgo.git cd ellalgo

4. You should run:

pip install -U pip setuptools -e .

to be able to import the package under development in the Python REPL.

5. Install [pre-commit]:

   pip install pre-commit
   pre-commit install
   

   ellalgo comes with a lot of hooks configured to automatically help the developer to check the code being written.

Implement your changes

1. Create a branch to hold your changes:

   git checkout -b my-feature
   

   and start making changes. Never work on the main branch!

2. Start your work on this branch. Don't forget to add [docstrings] to new functions, modules and classes, especially if they are part of public APIs.

3. Add yourself to the list of contributors in AUTHORS.rst.

4. When you’re done editing, do:

   git add <MODIFIED FILES>
   git commit
   

   to record your changes in [git].

   
   Please make sure to see the validation messages from [pre-commit] and fix
   any eventual issues.
   This should automatically use [flake8]/[black] to check/fix the code style
   in a way that is compatible with the project.
   
   :::{important}
   Don't forget to add unit tests and documentation in case your
   contribution adds an additional feature and is not just a bugfix.
   
   Moreover, writing a [descriptive commit message] is highly recommended.
   In case of doubt, you can check the commit history with:
   
   

   git log --graph --decorate --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit --all

   
   to look for recurring communication patterns.
   :::
   
   

5. Please check that your changes don't break any unit tests with:

   tox
   

   (after having installed [tox] with pip install tox or pipx).

   You can also use [tox] to run several other pre-configured tasks in the repository. Try tox -av to see a list of the available checks.

Submit your contribution

1. If everything works fine, push your local branch to the remote server with:

   git push -u origin my-feature
   

2. Go to the web page of your fork and click "Create pull request" to send your changes for review.

   Find more detailed information in [creating a PR]. You might also want to open the PR as a draft first and mark it as ready for review after the feedbacks from the continuous integration (CI) system or any required fixes.

Troubleshooting

The following tips can be used when facing problems to build or test the package:

1. Make sure to fetch all the tags from the upstream repository. The command git describe --abbrev=0 --tags should return the version you are expecting. If you are trying to run CI scripts in a fork repository, make sure to push all the tags. You can also try to remove all the egg files or the complete egg folder, i.e., .eggs, as well as the *.egg-info folders in the src folder or potentially in the root of your project.

2. Sometimes [tox] misses out when new dependencies are added, especially to setup.cfg and docs/requirements.txt. If you find any problems with missing dependencies when running a command with [tox], try to recreate the tox environment using the -r flag. For example, instead of:

   tox -e docs
   

   Try running:

   tox -r -e docs
   

3. Make sure to have a reliable [tox] installation that uses the correct Python version (e.g., 3.7+). When in doubt you can run:

   tox --version
   # OR
   which tox
   

   If you have trouble and are seeing weird errors upon running [tox], you can also try to create a dedicated [virtual environment] with a [tox] binary freshly installed. For example:

   virtualenv .venv
   source .venv/bin/activate
   .venv/bin/pip install tox
   .venv/bin/tox -e all
   

4. [Pytest can drop you] in an interactive session in the case an error occurs. In order to do that you need to pass a --pdb option (for example by running tox -- -k <NAME OF THE FALLING TEST> --pdb). You can also setup breakpoints manually instead of using the --pdb option.

Maintainer tasks

Releases

If instead you are using a different/private package index, please update the instructions accordingly.

If you are part of the group of maintainers and have correct user permissions
on [PyPI], the following steps can be used to release a new version for
`ellalgo`:

1. Make sure all unit tests are successful.
2. Tag the current commit on the main branch with a release tag, e.g., `v1.2.3`.
3. Push the new tag to the upstream [repository],
   e.g., `git push upstream v1.2.3`
4. Clean up the `dist` and `build` folders with `tox -e clean`
   (or `rm -rf dist build`)
   to avoid confusion with old builds and Sphinx docs.
5. Run `tox -e build` and check that the files in `dist` have
   the correct version (no `.dirty` or [git] hash) according to the [git] tag.
   Also check the sizes of the distributions, if they are too big (e.g., >
   500KB), unwanted clutter may have been accidentally included.
6. Run `tox -e publish -- --repository pypi` and check that everything was
   uploaded to [PyPI] correctly.

[^contrib1]:
    Even though, these resources focus on open source projects and
    communities, the general ideas behind collaborating with other developers
    to collectively create software are general and can be applied to all sorts
    of environments, including private companies and proprietary code bases.

[black]: https://pypi.org/project/black/
[commonmark]: https://commonmark.org/
[contribution-guide.org]: http://www.contribution-guide.org/
[creating a pr]: https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/collaborating-with-pull-requests/proposing-changes-to-your-work-with-pull-requests/creating-a-pull-request
[descriptive commit message]: https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit
[docstrings]: https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/usage/extensions/napoleon.html
[first-contributions tutorial]: https://github.com/firstcontributions/first-contributions
[flake8]: https://flake8.pycqa.org/en/stable/
[git]: https://git-scm.com
[github web interface]: https://docs.github.com/en/github/managing-files-in-a-repository/managing-files-on-github/editing-files-in-your-repository
[github's code editor]: https://docs.github.com/en/github/managing-files-in-a-repository/managing-files-on-github/editing-files-in-your-repository
[github's fork and pull request workflow]: https://guides.github.com/activities/forking/
[guide created by freecodecamp]: https://github.com/freecodecamp/how-to-contribute-to-open-source
[miniconda]: https://docs.conda.io/en/latest/miniconda.html
[myst]: https://myst-parser.readthedocs.io/en/latest/syntax/syntax.html
[other kinds of contributions]: https://opensource.guide/how-to-contribute
[pre-commit]: https://pre-commit.com/
[pypi]: https://pypi.org/
[pyscaffold's contributor's guide]: https://pyscaffold.org/en/stable/contributing.html
[pytest can drop you]: https://docs.pytest.org/en/stable/usage.html#dropping-to-pdb-python-debugger-at-the-start-of-a-test
[python software foundation's code of conduct]: https://www.python.org/psf/conduct/
[restructuredtext]: https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/usage/restructuredtext/
[sphinx]: https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/
[tox]: https://tox.readthedocs.io/en/stable/
[virtual environment]: https://realpython.com/python-virtual-environments-a-primer/
[virtualenv]: https://virtualenv.pypa.io/en/stable/