testbed/Project-MONAI__MONAI/CONTRIBUTING.md

• Introduction
• The contribution process
  • Submitting pull requests
  • Ensuring code quality
    1. Coding style
    2. Code analysis and unit testing
    3. Building the documentation
    4. Automatic code formatting
    5. Utility functions
• The code reviewing process (for the maintainers)
  • Reviewing pull requests
• Admin tasks (for the maintainers)
  • Releasing a new version

Introduction

This documentation is intended for individuals and institutions interested in contributing to MONAI. MONAI is an open-source project and, as such, its success relies on its community of contributors willing to keep improving it. Your contribution will be a valued addition to the code base; we simply ask that you read this page and understand our contribution process, whether you are a seasoned open-source contributor or whether you are a first-time contributor.

Communicate with us

We are happy to talk with you about your needs for MONAI and your ideas for contributing to the project. One way to do this is to create an issue discussing your thoughts. It might be that a very similar feature is under development or already exists, so an issue is a great starting point.

Does it belong in PyTorch instead of MONAI?

MONAI is based on the PyTorch and Numpy libraries. These libraries implement what we consider to be best practice for general scientific computing and deep learning functionality. MONAI builds on these with a strong focus on medical applications. As such, it is a good idea to consider whether your functionality is medical-application specific or not. General deep learning functionality may be better off in PyTorch; you can find their contribution guidelines here.

The contribution process

Pull request early

We encourage you to create pull requests early. It helps us track the contributions under development, whether they are ready to be merged or not. Change your pull request's title to begin with [WIP] until it is ready for formal review.

Submitting pull requests

All code changes to the master branch must be done via pull requests.

1. Create a new ticket or take a known ticket from the issue list.
2. Check if there's already a branch dedicated to the task.
3. If the task has not been taken, create a new branch in your fork of the codebase named [ticket_id]-[task_name]. For example, branch name 19-ci-pipeline-setup corresponds to issue #19. Ideally, the new branch should be based on the latest master branch.
4. Make changes to the branch (use detailed commit messages if possible).
5. Make sure that new tests cover the changes and the changed codebase passes all tests locally.
6. Create a new pull request from the task branch to the master branch, with detailed descriptions of the purpose of this pull request.
7. Check the CI/CD status of the pull request, make sure all CI/CD tests passed.
8. Wait for reviews; if there are reviews, make point-to-point responses, make further code changes if needed.
9. If there're conflicts between the pull request branch and the master branch, pull the changes from the master and resolve the conflicts locally.
10. Reviewer and contributor may have discussions back and forth until all comments addressed.
11. Wait for the pull request to be merged.

Ensuring code quality

To ensure the code quality, MONAI relies on several linting tools (flake8 and its plugins, black, isort), static type analysis tools (mypy, pytype), as well as a set of unit/integration tests.

This section highlights all the necessary steps required before sending a pull request. To collaborate efficiently, please read through this section and follow them.

• Coding style
• Code analysis and unit testing
• Building documentation

Coding style

Coding style is checked and enforced by flake8, black, and isort, using a flake8 configuration similar to PyTorch's. The next section provides a few commands to run the relevant tools.

For string definition, f-string is recommended to use over %-print and format-print from python 3.6. So please try to use f-string if you need to define any string object.

License information: all source code files should start with this paragraph:

# Copyright 2020 MONAI Consortium
# Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
# you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
# You may obtain a copy of the License at
#     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
# Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
# distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
# WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
# See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
# limitations under the License.

Code analysis and unit testing

MONAI tests are located under tests/.

• The unit test's file name follows test_[module_name].py.
• The integration test's file name follows test_integration_[workflow_name].py.

A bash script (runtests.sh) is provided to run all tests locally Please run ./runtests.sh -h to see all options.

To run a particular test, for example tests/test_dice_loss.py:

python -m tests.test_dice_loss

Before submitting a pull request, we recommend that all linting and unit tests should pass, by running the following command locally:

./runtests.sh --codeformat --coverage

It is recommended that the new test test_[module_name].py is constructed by using only python 3.6+ build-in functions, torch, numpy, and parameterized packages. If it requires any other external packages, please make sure:

• the packages are listed in requirements-dev.txt
• the new test test_[module_name].py is added to the exclude_cases in ./tests/min_tests.py so that the minimal CI runner will not execute it.

If it's not tested, it's broken

All new functionality should be accompanied by an appropriate set of tests. MONAI functionality has plenty of unit tests from which you can draw inspiration, and you can reach out to us if you are unsure of how to proceed with testing.

MONAI's code coverage report is available at CodeCov.

Building the documentation

MONAI's documentation is located at docs/.

# install the doc-related dependencies
pip install --upgrade pip
pip install -r docs/requirements.txt

# build the docs
cd docs/
make html

The above commands build html documentation, they are used to automatically generate https://docs.monai.io.

Before submitting a pull request, it is recommended to:

• edit the relevant .rst files in docs/source accordingly.
• build html documentation locally
• check the auto-generated documentation (by browsing ./docs/build/html/index.html with a web browser)
• type make clean in docs/ folder to remove the current build files.

Please type make help for all supported format options.

Automatic code formatting

MONAI provides support of automatic Python code formatting via a customised GitHub action. This makes the project's Python coding style consistent and reduces maintenance burdens. Commenting a pull request with /black triggers the formatting action based on psf/Black (this is implemented with slash command dispatch).

Steps for the formatting process:

• After submitting a pull request or push to an existing pull request, make a comment to the pull request to trigger the formatting action. The first line of the comment must be /black so that it will be interpreted by the comment parser.
• [Auto] The GitHub action tries to format all Python files (using psf/Black) in the branch and makes a commit under the name "MONAI bot" if there's code change. The actual formatting action is deployed at project-monai/monai-code-formatter.
• [Auto] After the formatting commit, the GitHub action adds an emoji to the comment that triggered the process.
• Repeat the above steps if necessary.

Utility functions

MONAI provides a set of generic utility functions and frequently used routines. These are located in monai/utils and in the module folders such as networks/utils.py. Users are encouraged to use these common routines to improve code readability and reduce the code maintenance burdens.

Notably,

• monai.module.export decorator can make the module name shorter when importing, for example, import monai.transforms.Spacing is the equivalent of monai.transforms.spatial.array.Spacing if class Spacing defined in file monai/transforms/spatial/array.py is decorated with @export("monai.transforms").

The code reviewing process

Reviewing pull requests

All code review comments should be specific, constructive, and actionable.

1. Check the CI/CD status of the pull request, make sure all CI/CD tests passed before reviewing (contact the branch owner if needed).
2. Read carefully the descriptions of the pull request and the files changed, write comments if needed.
3. Make in-line comments to specific code segments, request for changes if needed.
4. Review any further code changes until all comments addressed by the contributors.
5. Merge the pull request to the master branch.
6. Close the corresponding task ticket on the issue list.

Admin tasks

Release a new version

• Prepare a release note.
• Checkout a new branch releases/[version number] locally from the master branch and push to the codebase.
• Create a tag, for example git tag -a 0.1a -m "version 0.1a".
• Push the tag to the codebase, for example git push origin 0.1a. This step will trigger package building and testing. The resultant packages are automatically uploaded to TestPyPI. The packages are also available for downloading as repository's artifacts (e.g. the file at https://github.com/Project-MONAI/MONAI/actions/runs/66570977).
• Check the release test at TestPyPI, download the artifacts when the CI finishes.
• Upload the packages to PyPI. This could be done manually by twine upload dist/*, given the artifacts are unzipped to the folder dist/.
• Publish the release note.

Note that the release should be tagged with a PEP440 compliant semantic versioning number.

If any error occurs during the release process, first checkout a new branch from the master, make PRs to the master to fix the bugs via the regular contribution procedure. Then rollback the release branch and tag:

• remove any artifacts (website UI) and tag (git tag -d and git push origin -d).
• reset the releases/[version number] branch to the latest master:

git checkout master
git pull origin master
git checkout releases/[version number]
git reset --hard master

Finally, repeat the tagging and TestPyPI uploading process.