If you find a bug in Parameters or would like to suggest an improvement, go to the issue_tracker and check whether someone else already reported the same bug or requested the same improvement. If not, click on “New Issue” and describe the problem, preferably including a code sample that reproduces the problem.
We strongly suggest you use virtualenv to isolate your work on Parameters from your default Python installation. It is best to create two virtualenvs, one using Python 2.7, the other using Python 3.2 or later.
To run the tests, we suggest installing at least nose, NumPy and PyYAML. You may also need to install SciPy.
To obtain the Parameters source code, you will need a GitHub account. You should then fork https://github.com/NeuralEnsemble/parameters (see the GitHub documentation if you are new to GitHub) and clone your own copy of the repository:
git clone git@github.com:<username>/parameters.git
You will then need either to install Parameters in your virtualenv(s) or otherwise add it to your PYTHONPATH.
The easiest way to run the test suite is to run nosetests in the root of the source directory or in the test subdirectory.
Tests should be run with both Python 2.7 and some version of Python >= 3.2.
Parameters is intended to support Python 2.7 and all versions of Python >= 3.2, using a single code base. For guidance on achieving this, see Porting to Python 3 and the Python 3 Porting Guide.
When you are happy with your changes to the code, all the tests pass with all supported versions of Python, open a pull request on Github.
If you are the release manager for Parameters, here is a checklist for making a release: