Contributions to MODFLOW 6 are welcome from the community. As a contributor, here are the guidelines we would like you to follow:
- Code of Conduct
- Question or Problem?
- Issues and Bugs
- Feature Requests
- Submission Guidelines
- Coding Rules
- Format Rules
- Commit Message Guidelines
Help us keep MODFLOW 6 open and inclusive. Please read and follow our [Code of Conduct][coc].
Do not open issues for general support questions as we want to keep GitHub issues for bug reports and feature requests. You've got much better chances of getting your question answered on Stack Overflow where the questions should be tagged with tag modflow6.
Stack Overflow is a much better place to ask questions since:
- there are thousands of people willing to help on Stack Overflow
- questions and answers stay available for public viewing so your question / answer might help someone else
- Stack Overflow's voting system assures that the best answers are prominently visible.
To save your and our time, we will systematically close all issues that are requests for general support and redirect people to Stack Overflow.
If you find a bug in the source code, you can help us by submitting an issue to our [GitHub Repository][github]. Even better, you can submit a Pull Request with a fix.
You can request a new feature by submitting an issue to our GitHub Repository. If you would like to implement a new feature, please submit an issue with a proposal for your work first, to be sure that we can use it. Please consider what kind of change it is:
- For a Major Feature, first open an issue and outline your proposal so that it can be discussed. This will also allow us to better coordinate our efforts, prevent duplication of work, and help you to craft the change so that it is successfully accepted into the project.
- Small Features can be crafted and directly submitted as a Pull Request.
Before you submit an issue, please search the issue tracker, maybe an issue for your problem already exists and the discussion might inform you of workarounds readily available.
We want to fix all the issues as soon as possible, but before fixing a bug we need to reproduce and confirm it. In order to reproduce bugs, we will systematically ask you to provide a minimal, complete, and verifiable example. Having a minimal, complete, and verifiable example gives us a wealth of important information without going back & forth to you with additional questions like:
- version of MODFLOW 6 used
- and most importantly - a use-case that fails (ideally an example that uses flopy to generate MODFLOW 6 input files - see test_gwf* python scripts in the
autotest/directory)
We will be insisting on a minimal minimal, complete, and verifiable example in order to save maintainers time and ultimately be able to fix more bugs. We understand that sometimes it might be hard to extract essentials bits of code from a larger code-base but we really need to isolate the problem before we can fix it.
Unfortunately, we are not able to investigate / fix bugs without a minimal, complete, and verifiable example, so if we don't hear back from you we are going to close an issue that doesn't have enough info to be reproduced.
You can file new issues by filling out our new issue form.
Before you submit your Pull Request (PR) consider the following guidelines:
-
Search GitHub for an open or closed PR that relates to your submission. You don't want to duplicate effort.
-
Fork the MODFLOW-USGS/modflow6 repo.
-
Make your changes in a new git branch:
git checkout -b my-fix-branch develop
-
Create your patch, including appropriate test cases.
-
Follow our Coding Rules.
-
Run
build_makefiles.pyin the./distribution/directory if you have added any new sourcefiles, removed any source files, or renamed any source files. -
Run the full modflow6 test suite, as described in the [developer documentation][dev-doc], and ensure that all tests pass.
-
Commit your changes using a descriptive commit message that follows our commit message conventions. Adherence to these conventions is necessary because release notes are automatically generated from these messages.
git commit -a
Note: the optional commit
-acommand line option will automatically "add" and "rm" edited files. -
Push your branch to GitHub:
git push origin my-fix-branch
-
In GitHub, send a pull request to
modflow6:develop.
- If we suggest changes then:
-
Make the required updates.
-
Re-run the MODFLOW 6 test suites, in the autotest directory, to ensure tests are still passing. The test suites are run using python nosetests and require flopy and pymake.
-
Rebase your branch and force push to your GitHub repository (this will update your Pull Request):
git rebase develop -i git push -f
-
That's it! Thank you for your contribution!
After your pull request is merged, you can safely delete your branch and pull the changes from the main (upstream) repository:
-
Delete the remote branch on GitHub either through the GitHub web UI or your local shell as follows:
git push origin --delete my-fix-branch
-
Check out the develop branch:
git checkout develop -f
-
Delete the local branch:
git branch -D my-fix-branch
-
Update your develop with the latest upstream version:
git pull --ff upstream develop
To ensure consistency throughout the source code, keep these rules in mind as you are working:
- All features or bug fixes must be tested by one or more specs (unit-tests and/or integration/regression-tests).
- All Fortran souce code submissions must adhere to modflow6 Format Rules
Fortran souce code format rules are met by running the
fprettify formatter while specifying the MODFLOW 6 fprettify configuration. fprettify is included in the Conda environment.yml and can be run on the command line or integrated into a VSCode or Visual Studio environment.
The configuration file reflects the current minimum standard for Fortran source formatting. The main goal, however, is consistent and readable Fortran source code and as such pay particular attention to consistency within and across files. As the formatting tool may at times shift code in unexpected ways, check for formatting consistency after running.
An example run of the command line tool from the MODFLOW 6 root directory:
fprettify -c .fprettify.yaml ./utils/zonebudget/src/zbud6.f90
When run in this way, the tool will modify the file in place and generate no output if successful. The tool will write stderr warnings when unable to complete formatting. In general, these warnings (e.g. for excess line length) must be manually fixed before attempting to rerun the tool.
Fortran source files can be excluded from the formatting standard if necessary, as is the case
for Fortran source found under the modflow6/src/Utilities/Libraries path.
We have very precise rules over how our git commit messages can be formatted. This leads to more readable messages that are easy to follow when looking through the project history. But also, we use the git commit messages to generate the MODFLOW 6 change log.
Each commit message consists of a header, a body and a footer. The header has a special format that includes a type, a scope and a subject:
<type>(<scope>): <subject>
<BLANK LINE>
<body>
<BLANK LINE>
<footer>
The header is mandatory and the scope of the header is optional.
Any line of the commit message cannot be longer 100 characters! This allows the message to be easier to read on GitHub as well as in various git tools.
The footer should contain a closing reference to an issue if any.
Samples: (even more samples)
docs(changelog): update changelog to beta.5
fix(release): need to depend alslkj askjalj lhjfjepo kjpodep
The version in our lakjoifejw jiej kdjijeqw kjdwjopj lkl kopfcqiw cakd kjkfje mmsm.
If the commit reverts a previous commit, it should begin with revert: , followed by the header of the reverted commit. In the body it should say: This reverts commit <hash>., where the hash is the SHA of the commit being reverted.
Must be one of the following:
- ci: Changes to our CI configuration files and scripts (example scopes: Travis)
- docs: Documentation only changes
- feat: A new feature
- fix: A bug fix
- perf: A code change that improves performance
- refactor: A code change that neither fixes a bug nor adds a feature
- style: Changes that do not affect the meaning of the code (white-space, formatting, missing semi-colons, etc)
- test: Adding missing tests or correcting existing tests
The scope should be the name of the MODFLOW 6 module/class affected (as perceived by the person reading the changelog generated from commit messages).
There are currently a few exceptions to the "use module/class name" rule:
- releasenotes: used for updating the release notes
- readme: used for updating the release notes in README.md
- changelog: used for updating the release notes in CHANGELOG.md
- none/empty string: useful for
style,testandrefactorchanges that are done across all packages (e.g.style: add missing semicolons) and for docs changes that are not related to a specific package (e.g.docs: fix typo in tutorial).
The subject contains a succinct description of the change:
- use the imperative, present tense: "change" not "changed" nor "changes"
- don't capitalize the first letter
- no dot (.) at the end
Just as in the subject, use the imperative, present tense: "change" not "changed" nor "changes". The body should include the motivation for the change and contrast this with previous behavior.
The footer should contain any information about Breaking Changes and is also the place to reference GitHub issues that this commit Closes.
Breaking Changes should start with the word BREAKING CHANGE: with a space or two newlines. The rest of the commit message is then used for this.