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Contributing to bmm

Source: .github/CONTRIBUTING.md

The bmm package is designed to be community driven and thus we appreciate your input! We attempt to make contributing to bmm as easy and transparent as possible. These contributor guidelines are designed to clarify different types of contributions and how they will be acknowledge in the package publication.

The following contributions will be acknowledge in the NEWS for each release of the package:

  • Reporting a bug
  • Submitting a bug fix
  • Discussing and proposing improvements on the current state of the code, in particular:
  • improving stability of model estimation
  • speeding up model estimation
  • generalizing functions across multiple already implemented bmmodels

More extensive contributions will be acknowledge by being listed as a contributor in the package documentation. These entail:

  • adding a new model to bmm
  • adding new function that ease the use of multiple models implemented in bmm
  • adding functions that implement the communication of bmm with other R packages, such as emmeans, tidybayes, bayesplot, etc.

Package Development on Github

We use Github to host all code, track issues and feature requests, as well as accept pull requests. Detailed info on the development process can be found in the bmm Developer Notes

All changes and additions to code have to be submitted via pull requests. We consider all pull requests as propositions for changes to the codebase. Thus, we reserve the right to not merge changes, if we feel that they are in conflict with general principles implemented in the bmm package. To avoid the rejection of pull requests, please consider contacting us before committing changes to bmm, especially if they involve changing a large number of files.

If you are interested in contributing to bmm, please follow the following steps.

  1. Fork the repo and create your branch from develop.
  2. If you’ve added code that should be tested, add tests.
  3. Update the documentation for the changes you implemented.
  4. Ensure that all unit tests passed.
  5. Ensure the R CMD Checks passed.
  6. Issue that pull request!

Use a Consistent Coding Style

Please follow the general coding style used throughout bmm. This entails:

  • labeling variables and functions using snake_case
  • avoid upper case labels in variable and function names

The bmm Developer Notes provide an introduction into the file organization of the package. Please follow the guidelines where to put functions associated with the different steps in fitting bmmodels. If you have questions or an unsure about where to add code, feel free to ask us. There is a dedicated Discussion page for informal chats and questions.

Any contributions you make will be under the GPL-2 Software License

In short, when you submit code changes, your submissions are understood to be under the same GPL-2 that covers the project. Feel free to contact us if that’s a concern.

Report bugs using Github’s issues

We use GitHub issues to track public bugs. Report a bug by opening a new issue; it’s that easy!

Write bug reports with detail, background, and sample code

When reporting a bug, please use the provided template.

Great Bug Reports tend to have:

  • A quick summary and/or background
  • Steps to reproduce
    • Be specific!
    • Give sample code if you can.
  • What you expected would happen
  • What actually happens
  • Notes (including why you think this might be happening, or stuff you tried that didn’t work)

We appreciate thorough bug reports a lot.