Contributing#

Contributions are welcome, and they are greatly appreciated! Every little bit helps, and credit will always be given.

You can contribute in many ways:

Types of Contributions#

Report Bugs#

Report bugs at astropy/specutils#issues.

If you are reporting a bug, please include:

  • Your operating system name and version.

  • Any details about your local setup that might be helpful in troubleshooting.

  • Detailed steps to reproduce the bug.

Fix Bugs#

Look through the GitHub issues for bugs. Anything tagged with “bug” and “help wanted” is open to whoever wants to implement it.

Implement Features#

Look through the GitHub issues for features. Anything tagged with “enhancement” and “help wanted” is open to whoever wants to implement it.

Write Documentation#

Specutils could always use more documentation, whether as part of the official specutils docs, in docstrings, or even on the web in blog posts, articles, and such.

Submit Feedback#

The best way to send feedback is to file an issue at astropy/specutils#issues.

If you are proposing a feature:

  • Explain in detail how it would work.

  • Keep the scope as narrow as possible, to make it easier to implement.

  • Remember that this is a volunteer-driven project, and that contributions are welcome.

Get Started!#

Ready to contribute? Here’s how to set up specutils for local development.

  1. Fork the specutils repo on GitHub.

  2. Clone your fork locally:

    $ git clone git@github.com:your_name_here/specutils.git

  3. Install your local copy, preferably into some sort of virtual environment using your preferred environment manager. For example, using conda:

    $ conda create --name specutils-dev python=3.11 pip
$ conda activate specutils-dev
$ cd specutils/
$ pip install -e .'[test]'

  4. Create a branch for local development:

    $ git checkout -b name-of-your-bugfix-or-feature

    Now you can make your changes locally.

  5. When you’re done making changes, check that your changes pass flake8 and the tests:

    $ tox -e codestyle
$ pytest

The tests will run on other Python versions automatically on opening a pull request, but if you want to attempt to run the full test suite locally before doing so you can run tox:

$ tox

  1. Commit your changes and push your branch to GitHub:

    $ git add .
$ git commit -m "Your detailed description of your changes."
$ git push origin name-of-your-bugfix-or-feature

  2. Submit a pull request through the GitHub website.

Pull Request Guidelines#

Before you submit a pull request, check that it meets these guidelines:

  1. The pull request should include tests.

  2. If the pull request adds functionality, the docs should be updated. Put your new functionality into a function with a docstring, and add the feature to the list in README.rst.

  3. The pull request should work for Python 3.10 - 3.12, and for PyPy. Check that all required tests passed in the Github Actions CI section at the bottom of your pull request.

Tips#

To run a subset of the tests, you can call pytest with a specific file provided as input. For example. from the base directory of a cloned specutils repository, you could run:

$ pytest specutils/tests/test_regions.py

You can also run a specific test defined within a file using the -k flag, for example:

$ pytest specutils/tests/test_regions.py -k test_invert