Contribution¶

Contributions are very welcome! Please have the design considerations in mind and follow the step by step guides below.

Design Considerations¶

The order of parameters and parameter riders in the GUI should represent the flow of data processing (figure).

OpenPivGui data processing flow diagram.

OpenPivGui ist designed for providing a very fast workflow. Don’t interrupt this workflow by asking for individual user input, as far as possible. Rather use parameters or algorithms.
Separate the user interface code from the working code. For new features (post-processing, format-conversion, whatever) rather start a separate project and just call it from the GUI, that integrating working code into the GUI-project.
The code is designed for developing it together with PIV-experimentalists rather than programmers. Therefore, keep the code as clear and concise as possible, also by resigning from too many user-friendly gimmicks.
Write your docstrigs in the Numpy/Scipy style.
Stick to PEP 8-Style.

This is the standard procedure of contributing to OpenPivGui.

If not done, install Git (platform dependend) and configure it on the command line:

git config --global user.name "first name surname"
git config --global user.email "e-mail address"

Create a Github account, navigate to the OpenPivGui Github page and press the fork button (top right of the page). Github will create a personal online fork of the repository for you.

Clone your fork, to get a local copy:

git clone https://github.com/your_user_name/openpiv_tk_gui.git

Change the code locally, commit the changes:

git add .
git commit -m 'A meaningful comment on the changes.'

See, if there are updates in the upstream repository and save them in your local branch upstream/master::
```
git fetch upstream
```
Merge possible upstream changes into your local master branch:
```
git merge upstream/master
```
If there are merge conflicts, use git status and git diff for displaying them. Git marks conflicts in your files, as described in the Github documentation on solving merge conflicts. After resolving merge conflicts, upload everything:
```
git add .
git commit -m 'A meaningful comment.'
git push
```
Propose your changes to the upstream developer by creating a pull-request, as described in the Github documentation for creating a pull-request from a fork. (Basically just pressing the »New pull request« button.)

Good luck!

If not done, install Git and configure it:

git config --global user.name "first name surname"
git config --global user.email "e-mail address"

Clone the git repository:

git clone https://github.com/OpenPIV/openpiv_tk_gui.git

Create a new branch and switch over to it:

cd openpiv_tk_gui
git branch meaningful-branch-name
git checkout meaningful-branch-name
git status

Change the code locally and commit changes:

git add .
git commit -m 'A meaningful comment on the changes.'

Push branch, so everyone can see it:

git push --set-upstream origin meaningful-branch-name

Create a pull request. This is not a Git, but a Github feature, so you must use the Github user-interface, as described in the Github documentaton on creating a pull request from a branch.
After discussing the changes and possibly additional commits, the feature-branch can be merged into the main branch:
```
git checkout master
git merge meaningful-branch-name
```
Eventually, solve merge conflicts. Use git status and git diff for displaying conflicts. Git marks conflicts in your files, as described in the Github documentation on solving merge conflicts.
Finally, the feature-branch can safely be removed:
```
git branch -d meaningful-branch-name
```
Go to the Github user-interface and also delete the now obsolete online copy of the feature-branch.

Good luck!