Contributing¶
Development happens on github and the preferred contribution method is by forking the repository and issuing a pull request. Alternatively, just sending a patch to luis@luispedro.org will work just as well.
If you don’t know git (or another distributed version control system), which is a fantastic tool in general, there are several good git and github tutorials. You can start with their official documentation.
If you want to work on the C++ code, you can read the chapter in the internals before you start. Also, read the principles declaration.
Debug Mode¶
If you compile mahotas in debug mode, then it will run slower but perform a lot
of runtime checks. This is controlled by the DEBUG
environment variable.
There are two levels:
DEBUG=1
This turns on assertions. The code will run slower, but probably not noticeably slower, except for very large images.DEBUG=2
This turns on the assertions and additionally uses the debug version of the C++ library (this only works if you are using GCC). Some of the internal code also picks up on theDEBUG=2
and adds even more sanity checking. The result will be code that runs much slower as all operations done through iterators into standard containers are now checked (including many inner loop operations). However, it catches many errors.
The Makefile that comes with the source helps you:
make clean
make debug
make test
will rebuild in debug mode and run all tests. When you are done testing, use
the fast
Make target to get the non-debug build:
make clean
make fast
Using make will not change your environment. The DEBUG
variable is set
internally only.
If you don’t know about it, check out ccache
which is a great tool if you are developing in compiled languages (this is not
specific to mahotas or even Python). It will allow you to quickly perform
make clean; make debug
and make clean; make fast
so you never get your
builds mixed up.