MercuryDPM - Contribution Guideline

Contributing to MercuryDPM

MercuryDPM is an open-source project, and we welcome contributions that improve or extend its capabilities. This document outlines how to contribute to MercuryDPM and addresses some common questions about the process.

Contribution Process

When you have written code that you would like to contribute to MercuryDPM, please follow these steps to ensure a smooth integration:

Commit Your Changes Clearly
Make sure your changes are committed using one or more Git commits with meaningful and descriptive commit messages that explain what your code does and why the changes are needed.

Create a Branch
All changes to MercuryDPM should be submitted via a pull request. To do this, create a branch in the MercuryDPM repository on Bitbucket from the main branch, create a new branch from the branch in your fork, and push your commits to that branch.

Open a Pull Request
Once your changes are ready, open a pull request (PR) from your branch to the main branch of the MercuryDPM repository. Please provide a short summary of your changes in the PR description, and link any relevant issues if applicable.

Review and Discussion
Your contribution will be reviewed by the main MercuryDPM developers. We may suggest changes to ensure consistency, performance, or clarity. Once the changes are approved and tested, your code will be merged into the main codebase.

Need Help?
Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions about the contribution process or want early feedback on your changes. We’re happy to help you make your contribution ready for inclusion in MercuryDPM.

License and Copyright

By contributing code to MercuryDPM, you grant us the right to redistribute your code under the terms of MercuryDPM’s license (3-clause BSD). This license is a permissive open source license that allows others (including you) to use the code commercially or non-commercially, provided that the license and copyright notice are included.

Please, place the following notice in the source code of every contributed file at the top: :

# This file is part of the MercuryDPM project (https://www.mercurydpm.org).

# License: BSD 3-Clause License; see the LICENSE file in the root directory.

You retain full copyright over your contributions. But once published under the BSD license, there is no turning back.

You must have the rights to the code you contribute. If the code is not entirely your own, please ensure that you have permission from the copyright holder to contribute it under the 3-clause BSD license.

Once contributed and merged, your code becomes part of the MercuryDPM project and will remain licensed under the BSD license. This means you cannot revoke the license after your code is accepted, but you are free to license your future versions or other work differently.