Helping out with the development of datapackage is much appreciated and we try to be a newcomer friendly project! There's a lot to do if we are supposed to be the goto python package for working with data packages.
We don't track an awful lot except for perhaps bugs and feature requests from non-developers (or very busy developers) in our issue tracker so the development is mostly fueled by the scratch your own itch mantra.
So start off by looking at what data packages can do and what feature you would like to see and use. Then just implement it!
We recommend using a virtualenv to set up the environment. If you have it installed it's as simple as typing this into a terminal:
> virtualenv venv
... some stuff happens ...
> source venv/bin/activate
There are other ways of doing this so feel free to read up on virtualenv and choose your preferred method.
After setting up your work environment you need to install the requirements. That's easy to do with pip:
> pip install -e .
Let's run the tests to be sure everything is working. We need to install tox if you don't have it already. To do so, run:
> pip install tox
Then simply run:
> tox
The tests will run and, after a while, you should see the result. If everything is green, you're ready to do some coding!
The development takes place in the master branch of our git repository. If you decide to hack on datapackage and add something awesome to it (and just to clarify: Everything is Awesome!) then fork the repository, do your changes (if you intend on doing many changes we recommend doing that in feature branches) and then create a pull request against the master branch.
At the moment we don't put any big restrictions on how you do your development and what you need to do, but there are two things we strongly recommend:
- If you've added any features, create tests for your code (in the
tests directory). This will help us maintain that feature in the
future. Also, be sure you haven't broken anything by running the
tests. That's as easy as typing
nosetestsin the commandline. - Try to be polite and helpful.
- Conform to the pep8 style guide and don't include unnecessary code.
Dont' forget to add yourself to the CONTRIBUTORS file when you've contributed something.
Oh... and also. The team (we who are interested in developing this python package so you can be a part of the team right now if you want) is a very happy team so don't forget to remind people in comments and pull requests how happy you are about things. Programming is fun so don't forget to share the joy of programming with all of us!