Contributing to City Energy Analyst (CEA)

First off, thank you for taking the time to contribute!

The following is a set of guidelines for contributing to CEA, which is hosted on GitHub. These are mostly guidelines, not rules. Use your best judgment, and feel free to propose changes to this document in a pull request.

Step 1. Let us know about it

Whether you would like to implement a new feature or fix a bug, let the CEA team know. This will help us to coordinate efforts across network of developers. It will also help us to better support your work.

You can let us know by reporting a new issue https://github.com/architecture-building-systems/CityEnergyAnalyst/issues/new/choose

Step 2. Install our development version

If you have not done it yet, please install the development version of CEA. Make sure you have the CEA repository (included in the development version) connected via github and your favorite python editor (ours is PyCharm). You can download the development version with the same link as the one used www.cityenergyanalyst.com/tryit.

Here we tell you how to do it https://cityenergyanalyst.com/blog/2019/6/3/how-to-install-the-cea-on-windows-part-2

Step 3. Branch out and code

Branch out from out main ‘Master branch” of our github repository and start coding. This can be done with the CEA development version. For this make sure to use one of our template scripts and follow the documentation guide. This could help to maintain an homogeneous structure, and help us to acknowledge you.

Check these guides for more details: How to Use Github?, How to add a new script?.

Step 4. Check style

If you have not done it yet, take some time to get acquainted with variable names in CEA. This would make easier for you to understand and develop consistent code.

Here we tell some basic hints Variable Naming in CEA.

Step 5. Run some local tests

Now test if your creation does not brake CEA’s functionality.

The next guide explains how to run local unittests in CEA How to test the CEA?.

Step 6. Create a Pull request

Now it is time to ask other developer of CEA to review your code so we get to make it part of the CEA main core. We do this by creating a Pull Request in github.

Check this guide for more details on how to do it: How to Use Github?.

Step 7. Claim your CEA T-shirt!

What happens after that? We will check the code, and if all is correct we will proceed to make it part of CEA’s main source code. If your work has been merged, give yourself an applause. You have just made part of the growing network of developers of CEA.

Your are entitled to claim a CEA T-shirt after this to cea@arch.ethz.ch