Contributing

Contributions are welcome, and they are greatly appreciated! Every little bit helps, and credit will always be given.

You can contribute in many ways:

Types of Contributions

Report Bugs

Report bugs at https://github.com/inbo/niche_vlaanderen/issues.

If you are reporting a bug, please include:

  • Your operating system name and version.

  • Any details about your local setup that might be helpful in troubleshooting.

  • Detailed steps to reproduce the bug.

Fix Bugs

Look through the GitHub issues for bugs. Anything tagged with “bug” and “help wanted” is open to whoever wants to implement it.

Implement Features

Look through the GitHub issues for features. Anything tagged with “enhancement” and “help wanted” is open to whoever wants to implement it.

Write Documentation

niche_vlaanderen could always use more documentation, whether as part of the official niche_vlaanderen docs, in docstrings, or even on the web in blog posts, articles, and such. Note that on every documentation page there is a small “edit on Github” link in the top right - if you catch small errors, please suggest improvements.

Submit Feedback

The best way to send feedback is to file an issue at https://github.com/inbo/niche_vlaanderen/issues.

If you are proposing a feature:

  • Explain in detail how it would work.

  • Keep the scope as narrow as possible, to make it easier to implement.

  • Remember that this is a volunteer-driven project, and that contributions are welcome :)

Get Started!

Ready to contribute? Here’s how to set up niche_vlaanderen for local development.

  1. Fork the niche_vlaanderen repo on GitHub.

  2. Clone your fork locally:

    $ git clone git@github.com:your_name_here/niche_vlaanderen.git

  3. Install your local copy into a virtualenv. Assuming you have virtualenvwrapper installed, this is how you set up your fork for local development:

    $ mkvirtualenv niche_vlaanderen
$ cd niche_vlaanderen/
$ python setup.py develop

  4. Create a branch for local development:

    $ git checkout -b name-of-your-bugfix-or-feature

    Now you can make your changes locally.

  5. When you’re done making changes, check that your changes pass flake8 and the tests, including testing other Python versions with tox:

    $ flake8 niche_vlaanderen tests
$ python setup.py test or py.test
$ tox

    To get flake8 and tox, just pip install them into your virtualenv.

  6. Commit your changes and push your branch to GitHub:

    $ git add .
$ git commit -m "Your detailed description of your changes."
$ git push origin name-of-your-bugfix-or-feature

  7. Submit a pull request through the GitHub website.

Pull Request Guidelines

Before you submit a pull request, check that it meets these guidelines:

  1. The pull request should include tests.

  2. If the pull request adds functionality, the docs should be updated. Put your new functionality into a function with a docstring, and add the feature to the list in README.rst.

  3. The pull request should work for the supported versions listed in setup.py). Results of the automated tests can be found at: https://github.com/inbo/niche_vlaanderen/actions

Note

Note that this are guidelines. If you are stuck while adding functionality - consider doing a pull request anyway, others may be able to help.

Tips

Releasing a new version

1. The version numbers of niche_vlaanderen are based on semver: MAJOR.MINOR version. MAJOR versions can have incompatible API changes, MINOR versions are backwards-compatible. Alpha and beta releases are made by appending a1/b1 to the version number, eg 1.0a10 for the 10th alpha release.

  1. Before updating a version, make sure you run all notebooks (clear kernel and run all steps).

3. Check whether the reference values source table have been updated. For this, the data source repository needs to be checked at https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.10417821. If the reference table version (NICHE_FL_referencevalues_**v12C**.csv) is newer than the reference table version mentioned in niche_vlaanderen/version.py file, then

  • replace the niche_vlaanderen/system_tables/niche_vegetation.csv by the newer reference file. Note: the original name niche_vegetation.csv and header names must be kept!

  • edit the reference value version (__reference_table_version__), DOI (__reference_table_source__, choose the DOI of the specific version) and source file name (__reference_table_file__) in niche_vlaanderen/version.py, e.g.

    __reference_table_version__ = "12C"
__reference_table_source__ = "10.5281/zenodo.10521548"
__reference_table_file__ = "NICHE_FL_referencegroundwaterlevels_v12C.csv"

  • check if the metadata tables (other tables inside the system-tables subsfolder still correspond to the mappings described in the metadata description of Zenodo. Adjust if necessary.

  1. Similar as in 3., an updated file describing the vegetation types should replace the original niche_vlaanderen/system_tables/vegetatietypen.csv (Note: the file on Zenodo of version 12C (https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.10417821) does not contain the ‘Groep’ column.)

  2. Finally, to update the niche_vlaanderen package version, edit the package version (__version__) number in the file niche_vlaanderen/version.py.

Building the documentation

The documentation for the project can be found under the docs/ folder, and is written using reStructuredText.

To build the documentation locally, you need to install the doc requirements, which are based on sphinx.

$ pip install -r doc-requirements.txt

After which you should be able to generate HTML output by typing make html from the docs directory.

Publishing on the documentation website (https://inbo.github.io/niche_vlaanderen/ ) will happen when changes to master build correctly (under github actions). Note that this may mean that the documentation is actually a bit more recent than the last released version.