Contributing

Welcome to kuhl-haus-mdp contributor’s guide.

This document focuses on getting any potential contributor familiarized with the development processes, but other kinds of contributions are also appreciated.

If you are new to using git or have never collaborated in a project previously, please have a look at contribution-guide.org. Other resources are also listed in the excellent guide created by FreeCodeCamp [1].

Please notice, all users and contributors are expected to be open, considerate, reasonable, and respectful. When in doubt, Python Software Foundation’s Code of Conduct is a good reference in terms of behavior guidelines.

Issue Reports

If you experience bugs or general issues with kuhl-haus-mdp, please have a look on the issue tracker. If you don’t see anything useful there, please feel free to fire an issue report.

Tip

Please don’t forget to include the closed issues in your search. Sometimes a solution was already reported, and the problem is considered solved.

New issue reports should include information about your programming environment (e.g., operating system, Python version) and steps to reproduce the problem. Please try also to simplify the reproduction steps to a very minimal example that still illustrates the problem you are facing. By removing other factors, you help us to identify the root cause of the issue.

Documentation Improvements

You can help improve kuhl-haus-mdp docs by making them more readable and coherent, or by adding missing information and correcting mistakes.

kuhl-haus-mdp documentation uses Sphinx as its main documentation compiler with reStructuredText markup. The docs live in the docs directory alongside the project code, and any documentation update follows the same workflow as a code contribution.

To build the documentation locally, use one of the provided scripts from the project root.

Linux / macOS:

./build-docs.sh
./build-docs.sh --clean

Windows:

.\Build-Docs.ps1
.\Build-Docs.ps1 -Clean

Both scripts generate HTML output in docs/_build/html and open index.html in the default browser. The --clean / -Clean flag wipes previous build output first.

Code Contributions

Before diving in, please review the README for an overview of the system architecture, component descriptions, and data flow. The API documentation (generated from docstrings) is also a helpful reference.

Submit an issue

Before you work on any non-trivial code contribution it’s best to first create a report in the issue tracker to start a discussion on the subject. This often provides additional considerations and avoids unnecessary work.

Clone the repository

1. Create a user account on GitHub if you do not already have one.

2. Fork the project repository: click on the Fork button near the top of the page. This creates a copy of the code under your account on GitHub.

3. Clone this copy to your local disk:

   git clone git@github.com:YourLogin/kuhl-haus-mdp.git
   cd kuhl-haus-mdp
   

Create an environment

This project uses PDM for builds and requires Python 3.14 or later.

1. Create and activate a Python virtual environment:

   Linux / macOS:

   python3 -m venv .venv
   source .venv/bin/activate
   

   Windows:

   python -m venv .venv
   .venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1
   

2. Install the project’s dependencies:

   pip install -r requirements.txt
   

3. Install the project’s test dependencies:

   pip install -r requirements-test.txt
   

Implement your changes

1. Create a branch to hold your changes:

   git checkout -b my-feature
   

   and start making changes. Never work on the main branch!

2. Start your work on this branch. Don’t forget to add docstrings to new functions, modules and classes, especially if they are part of public APIs.

3. Add yourself to the list of contributors in AUTHORS.rst.

4. When you’re done editing, do:

   git add <MODIFIED FILES>
   git commit
   

   to record your changes in git.

   Important

   Don’t forget to add unit tests and documentation in case your contribution adds an additional feature and is not just a bugfix.

   Moreover, writing a descriptive commit message is highly recommended. In case of doubt, you can check the commit history with:

   git log --graph --decorate --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit --all
   

   to look for recurring communication patterns.

5. Run the unit tests with coverage to make sure nothing is broken:

   pdm run pytest --cov=kuhl_haus.mdp --cov-report=html tests -v
   

   This produces an HTML coverage report in htmlcov/.

6. Run flake8 to check code style:

   flake8 src/kuhl_haus/mdp --count --select=E9,F63,F7,F82 --show-source --statistics
   flake8 src/kuhl_haus/mdp --count --exit-zero --ignore=C901,W503 --max-complexity=10 --max-line-length=127 --statistics
   

Submit your contribution

1. If everything works fine, push your local branch to GitHub with:

   git push -u origin my-feature
   

2. Go to the web page of your fork and click “Create pull request” to send your changes for review.

Troubleshooting

The following tips can be used when facing problems to build or test the package:

1. Make sure to fetch all the tags from the upstream repository. The command git describe --abbrev=0 --tags should return the version you are expecting. If you are trying to run CI scripts in a fork repository, make sure to push all the tags. You can also try to remove all the egg files or the complete egg folder, i.e., .eggs, as well as the *.egg-info folders in the src folder or potentially in the root of your project.

2. Pytest can drop you in an interactive session in the case an error occurs. In order to do that you need to pass a --pdb option (for example by running pdm run pytest -k <NAME OF THE FAILING TEST> --pdb). You can also setup breakpoints manually instead of using the --pdb option.

Maintainer tasks

Releases

If you are part of the group of maintainers and have correct user permissions on PyPI, the following steps can be used to release a new version for kuhl-haus-mdp:

1. Make sure all workflows for the latest commit are successful.

2. Generate release notes by running the changelog script with the appropriate version bump:

   Linux / macOS / Windows with WSLv2:

   # For a patch release (e.g., 0.2.28 → 0.2.29)
   ./update-changelog.sh --bump patch
   
   # For a minor release (e.g., 0.2.28 → 0.3.0)
   ./update-changelog.sh --bump minor
   
   # For a major release (e.g., 0.2.28 → 1.0.0)
   ./update-changelog.sh --bump major
   

   The script will generate a new version section in CHANGELOG.rst with all commits since the last tagged release.

3. Review the generated CHANGELOG.rst, commit it, and create a pull request targeting the mainline branch.

4. After the PR is merged, tag the merge commit on the mainline branch with the corresponding release tag, e.g., v1.2.3.

5. Push the new tag to the upstream repository, e.g., git push upstream v1.2.3

6. The publish-to-pypi GitHub Actions workflow will build and upload the package automatically.

[1]

Even though, these resources focus on open source projects and communities, the general ideas behind collaborating with other developers to collectively create software are general and can be applied to all sorts of environments, including private companies and proprietary code bases.