Contributing#

Thank you for your interest in contributing to TorchDR! This library is a community-driven project, and we greatly appreciate contributions of all kinds, including bug reports, feature proposals, documentation, examples, tests, performance investigations, code review, and implementation work.

All participants must follow the Code of Conduct. Project roles and decision making are described in the governance document.

If you encounter any issues or have suggestions, please open an issue on our issue tracker. This allows us to address problems and gather feedback from the community.

Before starting a substantial feature, public API change, or architectural change, search for related work and open an issue so the approach can be discussed early. A focused bug fix, documentation correction, or small maintenance change may be submitted directly as a pull request.

For those who want to contribute code or documentation, you can submit a pull request. Below, you will find details on how to prepare and submit your pull request effectively.

PR Tutorial#

The preferred workflow for contributing to TorchDR is to fork the main repository on GitHub, clone, and develop on a branch. Steps:

  1. Fork the project repository by clicking on the ‘Fork’ button near the top right of the page. This creates a copy of the code under your GitHub user account. For more details on how to fork a repository see this guide.

  2. Clone your fork of the TorchDR repo from your GitHub account to your local disk:

    $ git clone git@github.com:YourLogin/TorchDR.git
$ cd TorchDR

  3. Install the package in editable mode with the development dependencies, as well as the pre-commit hooks that will run on every commit:

    $ pip install -e .[dev,doc] && pre-commit install

  4. Create a branch to hold your development changes:

    $ git checkout -b my-feature

    Always use a dedicated branch. It’s good practice to never work on the main branch!

  5. Develop the feature on your feature branch. Add changed files using git add and then commit the changes using git commit:

    $ git add modified_files
$ git commit -m "Your commit message here"

    To record your changes in Git, then push the changes to your GitHub account with:

    $ git push -u origin my-feature

  6. Follow these instructions to create a pull request from your fork. Then, a project maintainer will review your changes.

PR Checklist#

When preparing the PR, please make sure to check the following points:

  • The automatic tests pass on your local machine. This can be done by running python -m pytest torchdr/tests in the root directory of the repository after making the desired changes.

  • If your pull request addresses an issue, please use the pull request title to describe the issue and mention the issue number in the pull request description. This will make sure a link back to the original issue is created.

  • The documentation is updated if necessary. You can edit the documentation using any text editor and then generate the HTML output by typing make html from the docs/ directory. The resulting HTML files will be placed in docs/build/html/ and are viewable in a web browser.

Use a [Type] Description format for your PR title, where type is one of: Feature, Fix, Refactor, Doc, Test, Chore. For example: [Fix] Resolve NaN in PHATE potential distance.

If your PR is not yet ready for review, open it as a Draft Pull Request. Draft PRs are useful to:

  • Indicate that you are actively working on something to prevent duplicated efforts.

  • Request early feedback on functionality, design, or API.

  • Seek collaborators to assist with development.

When your work is ready for review, click Ready for review to convert the draft into a regular PR.

Review and acceptance#

Maintainers evaluate correctness, compatibility, scope, tests, documentation, and long-term maintenance cost. At least one maintainer other than the author should approve a change before merge, when practical. Larger or user-visible changes may require broader discussion under the governance decision process.

New contributor tips#

A great way to start contributing to TorchDR is to pick an item from the list of good first issues in the issue tracker. Resolving these issues allows you to start contributing to the project without much prior knowledge.