CONTRIBUTING

		      HOW TO CONTRIBUTE TO BART

Thanks for your interest in improving BART!

Before doing anything, please make yourself known to us and see
whether someone else is already working on the improvement you
suggest.

MAILING LISTS

We hold discusions on two email lists:

bart-user@physics.ucf.edu  - user support and feature requests
bart-devel@physics.ucf.edu - for people contributing code, docs, data, etc.

Please send messages to the right list.  You need to be a member to
post, to prevent spam.  Both are public lists with archives available
and searchable here:

https://physics.ucf.edu/mailman/listinfo/bart-user
https://physics.ucf.edu/mailman/listinfo/bart-devel

You can sign up for the mailing lists there.  They are Mailman lists,
so they can be delivered as a daily digest or as individual messages,
at your choice.  You can also read and search the archives there.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS' SOFTWARE LICENSING AGREEMENT

Software licensing can be a nightmare.  When you type a keystroke, you
create a copyright.  You don't have to file anything.  You don't have
to notify anyone.  This means that if a software project accepts code
from others, the code has a patchwork of copyright ownership that
quickly makes it impossible to distribute or license, for fear that a
contributor will want to charge for or lay some restriction on his or
her contributions.  In particular, the license under which the code is
released can effectively never be changed without every contributor's
consent.  So, it's critical to get that consent in advance.

Anyone who contributes to BART in any way thus must agree to our
CONTRIBUTORS' SOFTWARE LICENSING AGREEMENT (CSLA).  This agreement
signs over all rights to the contribution to the project.  The project
leadership then has the flexibility to change the license in the
future, as things develop in the technical and political realms.

Historically, software developers have frequently found such changes
necessary.  For example, we are initially releasing under an unusual
Reproducible Research (RR) license.  But, what if the community
flat-out rejects this idea, and refuses to use BART?  In that case, we
might consider softening some of its terms or eliminating it entirely,
but we could not do that unless everyone had agreed in advance to
allow us to.  That's what the CSLA is about.

To agree to the CSLA, you must include in your pull request the
statement:

"I agree to the CONTRIBUTORS' SOFTWARE LICENSING AGREEMENT."

MAKING CHANGES

Talk about your proposed change on bart-user@physics.ucf.edu, see if
it's being worked on, how others think it should be done, etc.
Depending on the change, this might just be a short conversation.

If it's agreed that the change would contribute to BART, make a new
Issue on the github site.

Read and agree publicly to the CONTRIBUTORS' SOFTWARE LICENSING
AGREEMENT.  Yes, this is 100% required for us to accept your change.
The Agreement explains why.

If you are not a BART-Devel member, fork the repo.

If you are a BART-Devel member, make a branch or work in an existing
branch.  DO NOT WORK IN MASTER!  If working in an existing branch,
talk to others working there before changing anything.  It's best to
make different branches for different purposes.

Make your changes.  Please use only the best programming style and be
consistent with the code you are changing.  Ask if you have questions,
as some of the code is necessarily complex.

Document your changes.  Write plenty of comments (likely MORE than
exist in the surrounding code; explain what the old behavior was, why
you changed it, and how it works).  Change/add to the text in the
relevant LaTeX documents as well, and compile them.

Test your changes, by running tests you write and include in your
eventual pull request and by running the Short Tests and checking
their output.  Proceed only when tests pass.  Some changes will change
the expected test output, so you will need to modify the test in a way
that doesn't use your modification (e.g., use some a priori
calculation).  It's fine to make short test (tiny wavelength regions,
few MCMC steps, etc.) to make them run faster.

Put your name, affiliation, contact info, and a BRIEF description of
your change in the CONTRIBUTORS file.

Email bart-devel@physics.ucf.edu to get feedback on your change.

Issue a pull request when it's time, which might be after someone's
looked at your change and given initial feedback.

Because of the risk of harming ongoing work, ONLY CORE CONTRIBUTORS
MAY MERGE INTO MASTER!  Pull requests may or may not be merged
immediately, depending on the nature of the change.  DO NOT CLICK
"This pull request can be automatically merged" unless you are a core
developer.

Currently, the Core Contributors are:

Patricio Cubillos
Jasmina Blecic

Thanks for contributing to BART!