Contributing

Contributions are welcomed via pull requests on GitHub. Contact the HOOMD-blue developers before starting work to ensure it meshes well with the planned development direction and standards set for the project.

Features

Implement functionality in a general and flexible fashion

New features should be applicable to a variety of use-cases. The HOOMD-blue developers can assist you in designing flexible interfaces.

Maintain performance of existing code paths

Expensive code paths should only execute when requested.

Optimize for the current GPU generation

Write, test, and optimize your GPU kernels on the latest generation of GPUs.

Version control

Base your work off the correct branch

  • Base backwards compatible bug fixes on trunk-patch.

  • Base additional functionality on trunk-minor.

  • Base API incompatible changes on trunk-major.

Agree to the Contributor Agreement

All contributors must agree to the Contributor Agreement before their pull request can be merged.

Source code

Use a consistent style

The Code style section of the documentation sets the style guidelines for HOOMD-blue code.

Document code with comments

Use doxygen header comments for classes, functions, etc. Also comment complex sections of code so that other developers can understand them.

Compile without warnings

Your changes should compile without warnings.

Tests

Write unit tests

Add unit tests for all new functionality.

Validity tests

The developer should run research-scale simulations using the new functionality and ensure that it behaves as intended.

User documentation

Write user documentation

Document public-facing API with Python docstrings in Google style.

Document version status

Add versionadded, versionchanged, and deprecated Sphinx directives to each user-facing Python class, method, etc., so that users will be aware of how functionality changes from version to version. Remove this when breaking APIs in major releases.

Add developer to the credits

Update the credits documentation to list the name and affiliation of each individual that has contributed to the code.

Propose a change log entry

Propose a concise entry describing the change in CHANGELOG.rst.