Contributing

Thank you for your interest in contributing to this project. We value contributions from people with all levels of experience. In particular if this is your first pull request, not everything has to be perfect. We will guide you through the process.

We use GitHub to host code, to track issues and feature requests, as well as accept pull requests. See https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/quickstart for a general introduction to working with GitHub and contributing to projects.

Types of Contributions

You can contribute in several ways:

  • 🐛 Report Bugs

    Report bugs at https://github.com/cda-tum/fiction/issues using the 🐛 Bug report issue template. Please make sure to fill out all relevant information in the respective issue form.

  • 🐛 Fix Bugs

    Look through the GitHub Issues for bugs. Anything tagged with “bug” is open to whoever wants to try and fix it.

  • ✨ Propose New Features

    Propose new features at https://github.com/cda-tum/fiction/issues using the ✨ Feature request issue template. Please make sure to fill out all relevant information in the respective issue form.

  • ✨ Implement New Features

    Look through the GitHub Issues for features. Anything tagged with “enhancement” is open to whoever wants to implement it. We highly appreciate external contributions to the project.

  • ✔️ Write Tests

    We can always use more tests to ensure that the code base is robust and stable. If you want to help out, you can start by looking through the CodeCov report to find out where we missed covering lines.

  • 📝 Write Documentation

    fiction could always use some more documentation, and we appreciate any help with that.

First Contributions

Ready to contribute? Check out the documentation to set up fiction for local development and learn about the style guidelines and conventions used throughout the project.

We value contributions from people with all levels of experience. In particular if this is your first PR not everything has to be perfect. We will guide you through the PR process. Nevertheless, please try to follow the guidelines below as well as you can to help make the PR process quick and smooth.

Core Guidelines

  • “Commit early and push often”.

  • Write meaningful commit messages (preferably using gitmoji to give additional context to your commits).

  • Focus on a single feature/bug at a time and only touch relevant files. Split multiple features into multiple contributions.

  • If you added a new feature, you should add tests that ensure it works as intended. Furthermore, the new feature should be documented appropriately.

  • If you fixed a bug, you should add tests that demonstrate that the bug has been fixed.

  • Document your code thoroughly and write readable code.

  • Keep your code clean. Remove any debug statements, left-over comments, or code unrelated to your contribution.

  • Follow the style and conventions used throughout the project.

  • Run clang-format and clang-tidy to check your code for style and linting errors before committing.

Pull Request Workflow

  • Create PRs early. It is ok to create work-in-progress PRs. You may mark these as draft PRs on GitHub.

  • Describe your PR. Start with a descriptive title, reference any related issues by including the issue number in the PR description, and add a comprehensive description of the changes. We provide a PR template that you can (and should) follow to create a PR.

  • Whenever a PR is created or updated, several workflows on all supported platforms are executed. Make sure your PR passes all of these continuous integration (CI) checks. Here are some tips for finding the cause of certain failures:

    • If any of the Ubuntu CI, macOS CI, Windows CI, or Docker Image CI checks fail, this most likely indicates build errors or test failures in the C++ part of the code base. Look through the respective logs on GitHub for any error or failure messages.

    • If the Coverage CI check fails, this means that your changes are not appropriately covered by tests or that the overall project coverage decreased too much. Ensure that you include tests for all your changes in the PR.

    • If the pyfiction check fails, this indicates an error in the Python part of the code base. Look through the respective logs on GitHub for any error or failure messages.

    • If the CodeQL check fails, this indicates a security vulnerability in the code base. Look through the respective logs on GitHub for any error or failure messages.

    • If clang-tidy comments on your PR with a list of suggestions/warnings, these have been raised when checking the C++ part of your changes for warnings or style guideline violations. The individual messages frequently provide helpful suggestions on how to fix the warnings.

  • Once your PR is ready, change it from a draft PR to a regular PR and request a review from one of the project maintainers.

  • If your PR gets a “Changes requested” review, you will need to address the feedback and update your PR by pushing to the same branch. You don’t need to close the PR and open a new one. Respond to review comments on the PR (e.g., with “done 👍”). Be sure to re-request review once you have made changes after a code review so that maintainers know that the requests have been addressed.

This document was inspired by and partially adapted from