Contributions are welcomed via pull requests. First, contact the freud developers prior to beginning your work to ensure that your plans mesh well with the planned development direction and standards set for the project. Then implement your code.
Submit a pull request. Multiple developers and/or users will review requested changes and make comments.
The lead developer(s) will merge into the main branch after the review is complete and approved.
The freud library provides a lot of flexibility to the user. Your pull request should provide something that is applicable to a variety of use-cases and not just the one thing you might need it to do for your research. Speak to the lead developers before writing your code, and they will help you make design choices that allow flexibility.
New functionalities should only activate expensive code paths when they are requested by the user. Do not slow down existing code.
In order to make freud as widely available as possible, we try to keep the number of dependencies to a minimum. If you need a feature present in an external library, follow the following steps:
- Add to freud itself if it's simple or if other modules would benefit:
- Example: Added simple tensor math for cubatic order parameter.
- Add via submodule if the code exists externally:
- Example: fsph for spherical harmonics.
- Contact freud developers to inquire if the library you'd like as a dependency fits in with the overall design/goals of freud.
Use the OneFlow model of development:
- Both new features and bug fixes should be developed in branches based on
main. - Hotfixes (critical bugs that need to be released fast) should be developed in a branch based on the latest tagged release.
Changes proposed in a single topic branch / pull request should all be related to each other. Don't propose too
many changes at once, review becomes challenging. Multiple new features that are loosely coupled should be completed
in separate topic branches. It is OK if the branch for feature2 is based on feature1 - as long as it is made clear
that feature1 should be merged before the review of feature2. It is better to merge both feature1 and feature2
into a temporary integration branch during testing.
Avoid whitespace changes and use separate pull requests to propose fixes in spelling, grammar, etc. :)
All contributors must agree to the Contributor Agreement (ContributorAgreement.md) before their pull request can be merged.
It is important to have a consistent style throughout the source code. Follow the source conventions defined in the documentation for all code.
Add comments to code so that other developers can understand it.
Your changes should compile without warnings.
All new functionality in freud should be tested with automatic unit tests that execute in a few seconds (if your specific test requires a long amount of time, please alert the freud developers as to why this is required so that your test can be opted-out of for "regular" unit-testing). High level features should be tested from Python, and the Python tests should attempt to cover all options that the user can select.
In addition to the unit tests, the developer should run research-scale analysis using the new functionality and ensure that it behaves as intended.
User documentation for the user facing script commands should be documented with docstrings in Google format. Include examples on using new functionality.
Developers need to be credited for their work. Update the credits documentation to reference what each developer has contributed to the code.
Add a short concise entry describing the change to the ChangeLog.md.