Contribute

You can help

Please open issues and feature requests on Github. We respond quickly.

  • Documentation. Tell us what’s missing, what’s incorrect or misleading.

  • Tests. If you have an example that shows a bug or problem, please file an issue!

  • Performance. If you are a C/cython/python hacker and see a way to make the code faster, let us know!

Direct contributions related to these items are welcome, too! If you want to contribute, please fork the project on Github, develop your change and then make a pull request. This allows us to review and discuss the change with you, which makes the integration very smooth.

Development setup

git

To hack on iminuit, start by cloning the repository from Github:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/scikit-hep/iminuit.git
cd iminuit

It is a good idea to develop your feature in a separate branch, so that your develop branch remains clean and can follow our develop branch.

git checkout -b my_cool_feature develop

Now you are in a feature branch, commit your edits here.

venv

You have the source code now, but you also want to build and test. We recommend to make a dedicated virtual environment for iminuit, separate from the Python installation you use for other projects.

The recommended way is to use Python virtual environments and pip.

python -m venv py3 # folders called py* are ignored by .gitignore
source py3/bin/activate
pip install -e '.[test]'

To delete the virtual environment just delete the folder py3.

Development workflow

To simplify hacking on OSX and Linux, we have a Makefile with common commands.

Build iminuit in-place and run the tests:

make test

Same and generate a coverage report:

make cov
<your-web-browser> htmlcov/index.htm

Build the docs:

make doc
<your-web-browser> doc/_build/html/index.html

Run the notebook tests:

make tutorial

Maintainers that prepare a release, should follow the instructions in doc/README.md

To check your iminuit version number and install location:

$ python
>>> import iminuit
>>> iminuit
# install location is printed
>>> iminuit.__version__
# version number is printed