Contributing to QuCAT

In order to contribute create a pull request from a fork of our Github repository. You can always Contact us, especially if you want to bring big contributions to the project.

The project repository is organized as follows

• The source code is stored in the src folder, and most functions a user interacts with are in src/core.py

• The functions and classes a user has access to when calling import qucat are defined in src/__init__.py

• Unittesting is carried out automatically each time code is contributed through the testing scripts located in tests. This is setup in the .github/workflows/tests.yml file

• The source code for the documentation is located in docs_src. By executing the build_docs.py script, it becomes the content for the documentation website. This content is stored in the folder docs

• One can use the cloned QuCAT library to test changes (rather than any pip-installed version) by editing and running the test.py script

• The master branch should reflect the latest pip-installable version of the software. Branches based on the master branch should be used for work in progress.

If you implement any new features in QuCAT, new function should contain a docstring and some comments, and tests should be implemented to automatically verify your contribution. Additional online documentation may be needed. Tutorials to help in all these tasks can be found below

• Format for docstrings and comments
• How to write and run unittests
  • Running tests
  • Writing a basic test
  • Writing a test for a GUI functionality
  • Writing a test based on a tutorial
• How to edit and build the documentation and website
  • Building the documentation
  • Editing class or function documentation
  • Editing the tutorials