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Contribution guidelines

This page details the some of the guidelines that should be followed when contributing to this package.

Reporting bugs

We track bugs using GitHub issues. We encourage you to write complete, specific, reproducible bug reports. Mention the versions of Julia and ForneyLab for which you observe unexpected behavior. Please provide a concise description of the problem and complement it with code snippets, test cases, screenshots, tracebacks or any other information that you consider relevant. This will help us to replicate the problem and narrow the search space for solutions.

Suggesting features

We welcome new feature proposals. However, before submitting a feature request, consider a few things:

  • Does the feature require changes in the core ForneyLab.jl code? If it doesn't (for example, you would like to add a node for a particular application), consider making a separate repository for your extensions.
  • If you would like to add an implementation of a feature that changes a lot in the core ForneyLab.jl code, please open an issue on GitHub and describe your proposal first. This enables us to discuss your proposal before you invest your time in implementing something that may be difficult to merge later on.

Contributing code

Installing ForneyLab

We suggest that you use the dev command from the new Julia package manager to install ForneyLab.jl for development purposes. To work on your fork of ForneyLab.jl, use your fork's URL address in the dev command, for example:

] dev git@github.com:your_username/ForneyLab.jl.git

The dev command clones ForneyLab.jl to ~/.julia/dev/ForneyLab. All local changes to ForneyLab code will be reflected in imported code.

Committing code

We use the standard GitHub Flow workflow where all contributions are added through pull requests. In order to contribute, first fork the repository, then commit your contributions to your fork, and then create a pull request on the master branch of the ForneyLab.jl repository.

Before opening a pull request, please make sure that all tests pass. All demos (can be found in /demo/ directory) have to run without error as well.

Style conventions

We use default Julia style guide. We list here a few important points and our modifications to the Julia style guide:

  • Use 4 spaces for indentation
  • Type names use UpperCamelCase. E.g., FactorNode, Gaussian
  • Function names are lowerCamelCase (differs from the official Julia convention). For example, isApplicable, currentGraph
  • Variable names and function arguments (e.g. inbound_messages) use snake_case
  • The name of a method that modifies its argument(s) must end in !

Unit tests

We use the test-driven development (TDD) methodology for ForneyLab.jl development. The test coverage should be as complete as possible. Please make sure that you write tests for each piece of code that you want to add.

All unit tests are located in the /test/ directory. The /test/ directory follows the structure of the /src/ directory. Each test file should have following filename format: test_*.jl.

The tests can be evaluated by running following command in the Julia REPL:

] test ForneyLab