Contributing Code

We welcome code contributions via GitHub pull requests.To help with maintainability of the code line we ask that the code uses a coding style consistent with the rest of WA code. Briefly, it is

  • PEP8 with line length and block comment rules relaxed (the wrapper for PEP8 checker inside dev_scripts will run it with appropriate configuration).
  • Four-space indentation (no tabs!).
  • Title-case for class names, underscore-delimited lower case for functions, methods, and variables.
  • Use descriptive variable names. Delimit words with '_' for readability. Avoid shortening words, skipping vowels, etc (common abbreviations such as “stats” for “statistics”, “config” for “configuration”, etc are OK). Do not use Hungarian notation (so prefer birth_date over dtBirth).

New extensions should also follow implementation guidelines specified in Writing Extensions section of the documentation.

We ask that the following checks are performed on the modified code prior to submitting a pull request:

Note

You will need pylint and pep8 static checkers installed:

pip install pep8
pip install pylint

It is recommened that you install via pip rather than through your distribution’s package mananger because the latter is likely to contain out-of-date version of these tools.

  • ./dev_scripts/pylint should be run without arguments and should produce no output (any output should be addressed by making appropriate changes in the code or adding a pylint ignore directive, if there is a good reason for keeping the code as is).

  • ./dev_scripts/pep8 should be run without arguments and should produce no output (any output should be addressed by making appropriate changes in the code).

  • If the modifications touch core framework (anything under wlauto/core), unit tests should be run using nosetests, and they should all pass.

    • If significant additions have been made to the framework, unit tests should be added to cover the new functionality.
  • If modifications have been made to documentation (this includes description attributes for Parameters and Extensions), documentation should be built to make sure no errors or warning during build process, and a visual inspection of new/updated sections in resulting HTML should be performed to ensure everything renders as expected.

Once you have your contribution is ready, please follow instructions in GitHub documentation to create a pull request.