Developers Guide

We invite contributions to NLTK. The following expectations apply to project members and pull requests will be vetted accordingly:

• assign copyright of the code to the "NLTK Project" (authors are identified at the top of each module)
• ensure that code works with Python 3.5 or later
• maintain high-quality coding standards; follow PEP-8 Style for code; use new style classes
• document method parameters using Sphinx markup
• include doctests in the module, class, and method docstrings following the model of the nltk.tokenize package
• test the module docstrings and .../nltk/test/*.doctest when code is changed
• follow the guidelines on Package Structure
• include detailed commit messages
• ensure that changes don't break other code (or else update other code as needed)
• discuss and announce significant changes on nltk-dev, including names for new packages