Contributing

When contributing to DuneCopasi, first discuss the change you wish to make via the issue tracker. Try to do this before anything else. This will greately improve both your and our experience working together :-). We follow the GitLab Workflow in our software development cycle and we expect you to be part of it. In short, contributing single features can be summarized by following these steps:

1. ISSUE: Create an issue in our Gitlab repository containing a proposal for your modification. We call this a task. If your proposal has a major change, create a meta-task, which should divide the proposal in several tasks. Use a suitable issue template for your proposal.
2. In the created issue, discuss with others the whole idea of your proposal. This is important because you may get input from someone who knows the software on how to do it effectively, and pointing out considerations you may have missed. It also synchronizes ideas so that changes are more easily accepted.
3. CODE: Implement what you proposed in a new branch :-)
4. Create a Merge Request (MR) using suitable template. Mark the MR as Draft until is sent to review for approval. MR differ from issues in that MR discuss how to implement the idea rather than the idea itself. A MR is filled of technical details that ensure that the task idea is fulfilled.
5. COMMIT: In the MR, discuss with others the details of your implementation. If discussions show that your proposal has to be modified to be accepted, push new commits and update the MR with the new technical details.
6. If applicable, create a unit test that proves that your implementation has the expected behavior. Ensure that the created test is being run by the Gitlab CI.
7. TEST: Once implementation and test are finished, ensure that your MR is passing the different pipelines.
8. Update the CHANGELOG with changes to the interface. It must include a link to the associated MR and a short description that summarizes the changes.
9. REVIEW: Send the MR to review for approval unmarking the WIP and assigning a maintainer to review your modification.

Check out our code of conduct, please follow it in our interactions.