CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing to shasta

Contributions of code, ideas, computational experiments, or documentation are welcome. To contribute, please use the standard GitHub Pull Request process and take into consideration the coding suggestions below.

Contributing C++ code

• Add at least a minimal amount of comments to explain or clarify what the code does.
• Use blank lines generously to separate code blocks.
• Set your editor to convert tabs to 4 spaces.
• To minimize name pollution of the global namespace, all code should be in the shasta namespace. Do not use using directives at global scope.
• If you need to add a large amount of code to an existing file, consider creating a new file instead.
• Keep in mind that the code is currently compiled using the C++20 standard. Use features in that standard liberally. However, you cannot use C++ features that are being considered for the C++23 standard.
• Build and test your code using the current long term support Ubuntu release.
• For functionality not provided by the standard libraries, you can also use the Boost libraries.
• If possible, avoid adding dependencies on other packages.

Contributing ideas, computational experiments, comments, or criticism

• Please use the GitHub Issues section of the GitHub repository as appropriate.

Contributing documentation

• Put your contribution in the docs directory, so it becomes automatically visible in GitHub Pages.
• Feel free to create new .html files, if appropriate.
• Attempt to harmonize your new materials with the existing documentation, if possible.