CONTRIBUTING.rst

Contribution Guide

Contributions are highly welcomed and appreciated. Every little help counts, so do not hesitate! You can make a high impact on pysonde just by using it and reporting issues.

The following sections cover some general guidelines regarding development in pysonde for maintainers and contributors.

Nothing here is set in stone and can't be changed. Feel free to suggest improvements or changes in the workflow.

Feature requests and feedback

We are eager to hear about your requests for new features and any suggestions about the API, infrastructure, and so on. Feel free to submit these as issues with the label "enhancement".

Please make sure to explain in detail how the feature should work and keep the scope as narrow as possible. This will make it easier to implement in small PRs.

Report bugs

Report bugs for pysonde in the issue tracker with the label "bug".

If you are reporting a bug, please include:

• Any details about your local setup that might be helpful in troubleshooting, specifically the Python interpreter version, installed libraries, and pysonde version.
• Detailed steps how to reproduce the bug <https://matthewrocklin.com/blog/work/2018/02/28/minimal-bug-reports>__

If you can write a demonstration test that currently fails but should pass, that is a very useful commit to make as well, even if you cannot fix the bug itself.

Bug Fix

Look through the GitHub issues for bugs.

Talk to developers to find out how you can fix specific bugs.

Preparing Pull Requests

1. Fork the pysonde GitHub repository. It's fine to use pysonde as your fork repository name because it will live under your user.

2. Clone your fork locally using git, connect your repository to the upstream (main project), and create a branch:

   $ git clone git@github.com:YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/pysonde.git
   $ cd pysonde
   $ git remote add upstream git@github.com:observingClouds/pysonde.git
   
   # now, to fix a bug or add feature create your own branch off "main":
   
   $ git checkout -b your-bugfix-feature-branch-name main
   

   If you need some help with Git, follow this quick start guide.

3. Make an editable install of pysonde by running:

   $ pip install -e .
   

The PDM package manager should now also have installed the pre-commit hooks that ensures that we all adhere to the same coding standard. pre-commit automatically beautifies the code, makes it more

maintainable and catches syntax errors.

In case it has not been installed automatically, the next step ensures it.

1. Install pre-commit and its hook on the pysonde repo:

   $ pip install pre-commit
   $ pre-commit install
   

   Afterwards pre-commit will run whenever you commit and can also be run independently by pre-commit run --all.

   You can now edit your local working copy and run/add tests as necessary. Please try to follow PEP-8 for naming. When committing, pre-commit will modify the files as needed, or will generally be quite clear about what you need to do to pass the commit test.

   pre-commit also runs:

   * `ruff <https://docs.astral.sh/ruff/>`_ code formatter.
   * `black <https://black.readthedocs.io/en/stable/>`_ code formatting
   

1. Break your edits up into reasonably sized commits:

   $ git commit -m "<commit message>"
   $ git push -u
   

2. Run all tests

   Once commits are pushed to origin, GitHub Actions runs continuous integration of all tests with pytest on all new commits. However, you can already run tests locally:

   $ pytest  # all
   $ pytest tests/test_mwx_output.py::test_mwx_conversion_to_level1  # specific tests
   

   Please stick to xarray's testing recommendations.

3. Create a new changelog entry in CHANGELOG.rst:

   The entry should be entered as:

   <description> (:pr:`#<pull request number>`) `<author's names>`_

   where <description> is the description of the PR related to the change and <pull request number> is the pull request number and <author's names> are your first and last names.

   Add yourself to list of authors at the end of .zenodo.json file if not there yet, in alphabetical order.

4. Finally, submit a Pull Request through the GitHub website using this data:

   head-fork: YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/pysonde
   compare: your-branch-name
   
   base-fork: observingClouds/pysonde
   base: main
   

Note that you can create the Pull Request while you're working on this. The PR will update as you add more commits. pysonde developers and contributors can then review your code and offer suggestions.