EPEs: EinsteinPy Proposals for Enhancement

EPEs are documents to address non-trivial enhancements that require discussion and thought beyond a single Pull Request. EPEs are also meant to put forward and document the governance model of The EinsteinPy Project. This is intended to mirror the long-standing Python Enhancement Proposal, and Astropy Proposal of Enhancement process, but generally not quite as formally. Normally a proposal goes through various phases of consideration. Discussion is expected to take place using existing mechanisms (einsteinpy-dev, github, hangouts, etc), and eventually a decision is made regarding whether the proposal should be accepted, rejected, or modified.

Accepted EPEs

#	Title	Date	DOI
1	EPEs and EinsteinPy Governance	2020-Feb-17

Proposing a new EPE

New EPEs should be created using the EPEtemplate.rst file in this repository. Fork the repository, copy EPEtemplate.rst to EPE_<some_working_name>.rst and issue a Pull Request with that file once you've written it up (little explanation is required in the PR itself given that the document has all the content - usually it's easiest to just paste in the abstract). The EPE number will be assigned once the PR is merged.

Note that there is not much point to making proposals unless someone or some group has signed up to implement it if the EPE is accepted (typically this would involve the author or authors of the EPE). Just issuing an EPE in order to spur others to do work is not generally going to be received well. Generally, an implementation is expected before an EPE can be considered fully accepted. For proposals that require extensive work that few are willing to perform without some assurance it will be accepted, provisional acceptance is an option. For serious consideration it is usually good to show that detailed technical aspects have been played with in real code rather (even if it isn't a complete implementation) [This point only applies to non-governance EPEs] .

Finalizing EPEs

The final decision on accepting or rejecting EPEs lies with the EisnteinPy Coordination Group. Once the community discussion on the EPE has wound down, the group discusses the EPE and makes a final decision on acceptance or rejection. One of the group members should then:

1. Fill in the "Decision rationale" section of the EPE with a description of why the EPE was accepted or rejected, including a summary of the community's discussion as relevant.

2. Update the "date-last-revised" to the day of merging and "status" to "Accepted" or "Rejected".

3. If necessary, rename the EPE file to be EPE##.rst, where ## is the next free number on the list of EPEs.

4. Leave a brief comment in the PR indicating the result.

5. Merge the PR with the above changes.

6. If the EPE was accepted then continue with the remaining steps, otherwise stop now.

7. Upload the EPE to Zenodo to give it a DOI. Go to https://zenodo.org/deposit/new, upload the .rst file, and set the fields to the following:

   Zenodo field	Set to
   Communities	The EinsteinPy Project
   Upload type	Publication
   Publication type	Technical note
   Publication Date	The date-last-revised of the EPE (which should be the same as the accepted date for new APEs)
   Title	EinsteinPy Proposal for Enhancement <number>: <title> (EPE <number>)
   Authors	The EPE authors (directly from the APE text, but with ORCIDs if possible)
   Description	The EPE abstract (copy/paste the rendered HTML from GitHub)
   License	CC-Attribution (default)
   Related/alternate identifiers	Github link to the EPE file at the specific merge commit (e.g. https://github.com/einsteinpy/EinsteinPy-EPEs/blob/ad87de75f6e2b950c35a946f506ca31d1c70af98/EPE_00001.rst) as "is supplemented by this upload". If this is a revised version, this should be the URL of the commit where the EPE was revised.

8. Get the source for the DOI badge from the newly-created Zenodo record page by clicking on the DOI badge on the right side of the page and copying the reStructuredText source.

9. On GitHub (or locally) edit README.rst and add an entry for the new EPE to the "Accepted EPEs" table. Use the DOI link from the previous step. Add corresponding RST link refs for both the DOI link and the new EPE. Preview the update and test the links to make sure they are all correct. Then commit directly to master (or PR if you prefer).

10. Send an email to einsteinpy-dev announcing the acceptance In general this should just point to the accepted EPE rather than providing additional decision rationale.

Updating EPEs

In the cases where an updated EPE requires updating (e.g. references to a new EPE that supercedes it, clarifying information that emerges after the EPE is accepted, etc.), changes can be made directly via PR, but the "date-last-revised" should be updated in the EPE. Additionally, the Zenodo entry will need to be updated with a new version of the EPE (not a completely new Zenodo entry), by using the "New version" button and then filling out the forms as described above.