Contributing code¶

The preferred way to contribute to Bushfire Attack Level Toolbox is to fork the main repository on GitHub:

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 the GitHub server.

Clone this copy to your local disk:

$ git clone git@github.com:YourLogin/bal.git
$ cd bal

Create a branch to hold your changes:
```
$ git checkout -b my-feature
```
and start making changes. Never work in the master branch!
Work on this copy on your computer using Git to manage version control. When you’re done editing, do:
```
$ git add modified_files
$ git commit
```
to record your changes in Git, then push them to GitHub with:
```
$ git push -u origin my-feature
```

Finally, go to the web page of the your fork of the BAL repo, and click ‘Pull request’ to send your changes to the maintainers for review. This will send an email to the code managers.

(If any of the above seems like magic to you, then look up the Git documentation on the web.)

It is recommended to check that your contribution complies with the following rules before submitting a pull request:

All public methods should have informative docstrings with sample usage presented as doctests when appropriate.
When adding additional functionality, provide at least one example script in the examples/ folder. Have a look at other examples for reference. Examples should demonstrate why the new functionality is useful in practice.
At least one paragraph of narrative documentation with links to references in the literature (with PDF links when possible) and an example.

You can also check for common programming errors with the following tools:

Check your code complies with good unittest coverage:

$ pip install nose coverage
$ nosetests --with-coverage path/to/tests_for_package