Contributing to refstudio

First of all, thanks for considering contributing to refstudio! 👍 It’s people like you that make it rewarding for us - the project maintainers - to work on refstudio. 😊

refstudio is an open source project, maintained by people who care. We are not directly funded to do so.

Code of conduct

Please note that this project is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By participating in this project you agree to abide by its terms.

How you can contribute

There are several ways you can contribute to this project. If you want to know more about why and how to contribute to open source projects like this one, see this Open Source Guide.

Think refstudio is useful? Let others discover it, by telling them in person, via Twitter or a blog post.

Using refstudio for a paper you are writing? Consider citing it.

Ask a question ⁉️

Using refstudio and got stuck? Browse the documentation to see if you can find a solution. Still stuck? Post your question as an new discussion on GitHub. While we cannot offer user support, we’ll try to do our best to address it, as questions often lead to better documentation or the discovery of bugs.

Want to ask a question in private? Contact the package maintainer by email.

Propose an idea 💡

Have an idea for a new refstudio feature? Take a look at the documentation and discussion list to see if it isn’t included or suggested yet. If not, suggest your idea as an discussion on GitHub. While we can’t promise to implement your idea, it helps to:

Explain in detail how it would work.
Keep the scope as narrow as possible.

See below if you want to contribute code for your idea as well.

Report a bug 🐛

Using refstudio and discovered a bug? That’s annoying! Don’t let others have the same experience and report it as an issue on GitHub so we can fix it. A good bug report makes it easier for us to do so, so please include:

The content of utils::sessionInfo().
Any details about your local setup that might be helpful in troubleshooting.
Detailed steps to reproduce the bug (tip: use reprex).

Improve the documentation 📖

Noticed a typo on the website? Think a function could use a better example? Good documentation makes all the difference, so your help to improve it is very welcome!

The website

This website is generated with pkgdown. That means we don’t have to write any html: content is pulled together from documentation in the code, vignettes, Markdown files, the package DESCRIPTION and _pkgdown.yml settings. If you know your way around pkgdown, you can propose a file change to improve documentation. If not, start a discussion so that we can point you in the right direction.

Function documentation

Functions are described as comments near their code and translated to documentation using roxygen2. If you want to improve a function description:

Go to R/ directory in the code repository.
Look for the file with the function.
Propose a file change to update the function documentation in the roxygen comments (starting with #').

Contribute code 📝

Care to fix bugs or implement new functionality for refstudio? Awesome! 👏 Have a look at the issue list and leave a comment on the things you want to work on. See also the development guidelines below.

Development guidelines

We try to follow the GitHub flow for development.

Fork this repo and clone it to your computer. To learn more about this process, see this guide.
If you have forked and cloned the project before and it has been a while since you worked on it, pull changes from the original repo to your clone by using git pull upstream main.
Open the RStudio project file (.Rproj).
Make your changes:
- Write your code.
- Test your code (bonus points for adding unit tests).
- Document your code (see function documentation above).
- Check your code with devtools::check() and aim for 0 errors, warnings and notes.
Commit and push your changes.
Submit a pull request.

Also note that we use the tidyverse design guide and tidyverse style guide. Your code must conform to this principles and rules.