CONTRIBUTING.rst

Contributing to tda-api

Fixing a bug? Adding a feature? Just cleaning up for the sake of cleaning up? Great! No improvement is too small for me, and I'm always happy to take pull requests. Read this guide to learn how to set up your environment so you can contribute.

Setting up the Dev Environment

Dependencies are listed in the requirements.txt file. These development requirements are distinct from the requirements listed in setup.py and include some additional packages around testing, documentation generation, etc.

Before you install anything, I highly recommend setting up a virtualenv so you don't pollute your system installation directories:

pip install virtualenv
virtualenv -v virtualenv
source virtualenv/bin/activate

Next, install project requirements:

pip install ".[dev]"

Finally, verify everything works by running tests:

make test

At this point you can make your changes.

Note that if you are using a virtual environment and switch to a new terminal your virtual environment will not be active in the new terminal, and you need to run the activate command again. If you want to disable the loaded virtual environment in the same terminal window, use the command:

deactivate

Development Guidelines

Test your changes

This project aims for high test coverage. All changes must be properly tested, and we will accept no PRs that lack appropriate unit testing. We also expect existing tests to pass. You can run your tests using:

make test

Document your code

Documentation is how users learn to use your code, and no feature is complete without a full description of how to use it. If your PR changes external-facing interfaces, or if it alters semantics, the changes must be thoroughly described in the docstrings of the affected components. If your change adds a substantial new module, a new section in the documentation may be justified.

Documentation is built using Sphinx. You can build the documentation using the Makefile.sphinx makefile. For example you can build the HTML documentation like so:

make -f Makefile.sphinx