Creating a pull request

Here describes the general procedures for creating a pull request in to GRBoondi. These provide general guidelines for adding your code to the repository and for making contributions.

Testing

Always create unit tests for your code. This allows others to verify your code works as it is intended to. For examples on creating your tests, you can look in to GRBoondi's tests. While tests don't guarantee your code works perfectly, it at the very least increases confidence. Ideally, you will have published some papers that use your code so that the results can be verified.

Make a new copy

Development can be messy! We are very aware of this (Check out the commit history!). Due to this fact, you should always create a new branch and add your (nicely commented) contributions there. Make sure your repo is up-to-date with the main GRBoondi branch! If we are in contact and you open a pull request, make sure the pull request is to this repo rather than your own fork.

Make sure to commit often (but not too often) so your progress can be tracked. It's usually non-ideal to make changes to thousands of lines of code in a single commit. That makes code analysis extremely painful. Conversely, it's a pain to search through a commit history riddled with thousands of commits because you make commits after every line change. Make intelligent choices for when you commit. You can always squash commits if you are debugging or making very incremental changes.

On the topic of commits, your commit messages should be terse. Check out this article for writing commit messages.

Make a pull request

Ok, you've written quality unit tests, added your code to a fresh copy of GRBoondi, and nicely commented your changes. After establishing contact with us and getting the go-ahead, you can open a pull request in this repo. Your code will be reviewed and the CI workflows will automatically run to ensure your code at least doesn't break GRBoondi.

You should document your changes in the pull request, explaining your general methodology, reasoning for the additions, and testing procedures. You could also create a draft pull request

Review

Your contributions will then be reviewed by the developers. Your additions will be scrutinized and questions will probably be asked. Don't worry this isn't personal! We must make sure your additions don't break other peoples codes! If everything looks alright, your pull request will be approved and your additions will be a part of core GRBoondi!

Reaching out

Please always feel free to reach out and discuss thing with the developers (email at bottom). We are generally friendly and very much welcome discussions!