Intro to Open-Source Development

This course covers Git, style guides, advanced python features, testing, documentation, and collaborative coding using GitHub.

It is designed to help engineering/science students learn to effectively contribute to the open-source scientific python ecosystem.

You can find a video introduction here

Course Learning Outcomes

After successfully completing the course you will be able to:

  1. Use the Git version control system to manage software projects.
  2. Apply style guides to codebases.
  3. Design object-oriented and functional python implementations for solving computing problems.
  4. Use the pytest framework to verify correctness of programs.
  5. Design documentation which effectively advertises and explains a project.
  6. Evaluate pull request and bug report quality and provide feedback for making improvements.
  7. Create and submit code contributions which follow best practices and project guidelines.

Prerequisites

This course is designed for students with some Python experience. Specifically you should:

  1. Be well-versed with writing python functions
  2. Be familiar with common data structures like lists, dicts, tuples, etc.
  3. Understand iteration and indexing
  4. Understand Python’s control flow (if/then, for, while, etc.)
  5. Know how to install python packages and manage python environments
  6. Be semi-comfortable using a terminal (command line)
Warning

Although the content is meant to be approachable, this is not a beginning python/computing course.

If you don’t feel comfortable with these topics, the Python Intro course material may be a better place to start.

See the OSC overview page for general information on course structure.

Project

The last part of this course is to make a non-trivial contribution to an open-source project. You can add a feature to an existing library, or release a small package of your own. More details are found in the collaborative development exercise.

Setup

Follow the setup guide to get setup for this course.