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Contributing

Project layout

The latest stable release of ATOM is on the master branch, whereas the latest version of ATOM in development is on the development branch. Make sure you are looking at and working on the correct branch if you're looking to contribute code.

In terms of directory structure:

  • All of ATOM's code sources are in the atom directory.
  • The documentation sources are in the docs_sources directory.
  • Images in the documentation are in the docs_sources/img directory.
  • Tutorial notebooks are in the examples directory. If you want to include the example to the documentation as well, add the .ipynb file to docs_sources/examples and update the mkdocs.yml file accordingly.
  • Unit tests are in the tests directory. Make sure to add the tests to the file corresponding to the module in the atom directory with the code that is being tested.

Make sure to familiarize yourself with the project layout before making any major contributions, and especially make sure to send all code changes to the development branch.



Submitting a pull request

Before you submit a pull request, please work through this checklist to make sure that you have done everything necessary so we can efficiently review and accept your changes.

If your contribution changes ATOM in any way:

  • Update the documentation so all of your changes are reflected there.
  • Update the README if anything there has changed.

If your contribution involves any code changes:

  • Adhere to PEP 8 standards.
  • Use a maximum of 88 characters per line. Try to keep comments and docstrings below 72 characters.
  • Update the project unit tests to test your code changes as thoroughly as possible.
  • Make sure that your code is properly commented with docstrings and comments explaining your rationale behind non-obvious coding practices.

If your contribution requires a new library dependency:

  • Double-check that the new dependency is easy to install via pip and Anaconda.
  • The library should support Python 3.6 and higher.
  • Make sure the code works with the latest version of the library.
  • Update the dependencies in the documentation.
  • Add the library with the minimum required version to requirements.txt and setup.py.

After submitting your pull request, GitHub will automatically run the tests on your changes and make sure that the updated code builds successfully. The checks are run on Python 3.6, 3.7, 3.8 and 3.9, on Ubuntu and Windows. We also use services that automatically check test coverage.

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