CONTRIBUTING.md

CONTRIBUTING

We welcome contributions from the community. Here you will find information to start contributing to scikit-multiflow.

Contribution to a GitHub project

If you are not familiar with Git or GitHub, here are good resources to start in the right direction:

• The beginner's guide to contributing to a GitHub project
• How to make a clean pull request

Code style and documentation

• Python Code shall comply with PEP 8

• Documentation shall be in docstring format and shall follow the NumPy/SciPy guidelines

  • An example from the sphinx documentation:
    http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/ext/example_numpy.html

Development

This section contains relevant information for development, including project setup, coding best practices, etc.

pip setup in editable mode

As default, pip installs a fixed version of a python package. However, during development, new code is added to a project incrementally and it is desired for developers to "see" these changes reflected immediately. For this purpose, pip install provides an editable mode option, to avoid re-running the setup script as new code is added.

To setupscikit-multiflow in editable mode you must run the following command from the local path of the project:

pip install -e .

Random number generators

Random number generators are handled as in scikit-learn. Meaning that, random number generators/seeds are refered as random_state. Before using a random_state object, we must ensure that it is valid, this is done via the utility function skmultiflow.core.utils.validation.check_random_state.

Testing

Run tests

We use pytest to maintain the quality of the framework. Always run the tests to ensure that everything is working as expected. To run the tests, from the package's root directory:

python setup.py test

Write tests

If you are adding new code to scikit-multiflow, it is highly encouraged that you include the corresponding test(s) as part of your Pull Request.

Sphinx documentation

• We generate our documentation using sphinx with the following dependencies: sphinx_rtd_theme
• To update the documentation, perform in a terminal the steps below:

  • Make your way to the scikit-multiflow parent directory (outside the project)

  • Type in:

    $ sphinx-apidoc -o scikit-multiflow/docs scikit-multiflow/ -e -f

  • Go to scikit-multiflow/docs and type in:

    $ make html

  • The documentation page is hosted in the gh-pages branch.