We welcome contributions from external contributors, and this document describes how to merge code changes into Psi4. As of February 2016, the procedure for contributing code is exactly the same for the core development team and for external contributors.
- Make sure you have a GitHub account.
- Fork the psi4/psi4 repository on GitHub.
- On your local machine, clone your fork of the Psi4 repository. More detailed instructions for forking Psi4 can be found here.
- Add some really awesome code to your local fork. It's usually a good idea to make changes on a branch with the branch name relating to the feature you are going to add.
- When you are ready for others to examine and comment on your new feature, navigate to your fork of Psi4 on GitHub and open a pull request(PR). Note that after you launch a PR from one of your fork's branches, all subsequent commits to that branch will be added to the open pull request automatically. Each commit added to the PR will be validated for mergability, compilation and test suite compliance; the results of these tests will be visible on the PR page.
- If you're providing a new feature, you must add test cases and documentation.
- When the code is ready to go, make sure you run the full test suite on your local machine to check that nothing is broken.
- When you see that all of the validation checks have passed on the PR page, check the "Ready to go" box, to let the Psi4 team know that the changes are complete; the code will not be considered for merging until this box is checked.