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Contribution Guide

Setting up the environment

  • The lowest currently supported version is Python 3.10. You should use uv to manage multiple Python versions on your system.
  • We maintain a Makefile with several commands to help with common tasks.

  • Install uv

  • Run uv sync to create a virtual environment and install the required development dependencies
  • Install pre-commit using uv: uv tool install pre-commit
  • Run pre-commit install --install-hooks to install pre-commit hooks

Code contributions

Workflow

  1. Fork the Cadwyn repository
  2. Clone your fork locally with git
  3. Set up the environment
  4. Make your changes
  5. Commit your changes to git.
  6. Open a pull request. Give the pull request a descriptive title indicating what it changes.

Guidelines for writing code

  • Code should be Pythonic and zen
  • All code should be fully typed. This is enforced via ruff but the type hinting itself will be enforced by pyright in the future.
  • When requiring complex types, use a type alias.
  • If something cannot be typed correctly due to a limitation of the type checkers, you may use typing.cast to rectify the situation. However, you should only use as a last resort if you've exhausted all other options of type narrowing, such as isinstance() checks and type guards
  • You may use pyright: ignore if you ensured that a line is correct, but pyright has issues with it.
  • If you are adding or modifying existing code, ensure that it's fully tested. 100% test coverage is mandatory, and will be checked on the PR using Github Actions
  • When adding a new public interface, it has to be included in the concept documentation located in docs/concepts.md. If applicable, add or modify examples in the docs related to the new functionality implemented.

Writing and running tests

Tests are contained within the tests directory, and follow roughly the same directory structure as the cadwyn module. If you are adding a test case, it should be located within the correct submodule of tests. E.g. tests for cadwyn/codegen.py reside in tests/codegen.

make test to run tests located in tests

Running type checkers

We use pyright to enforce type safety. You can run it with:

uv run pyright .

Project documentation

The documentation is located in the /docs directory and is all in Markdown.

Docs theme and appearance

We welcome contributions that enhance / improve the appearance and usability of the docs. We use mkdocs-material If you wish to contribute to the docs style / setup, or static site generation, you should consult the theme docs as a first step.

Running the docs locally

Then you can serve the documentation with mkdocs serve

Writing and editing docs

We welcome contributions that enhance / improve the content of the docs. Feel free to add examples, clarify text, restructure the docs, etc., but make sure to follow these guidelines:

  • Write text in idiomatic english, using simple language
  • Opt for Oxford commas when listing a series of terms
  • Keep examples simple and self contained
  • Provide links where applicable