Contributing

We would really love to see this project grow and get refined over the coming months and years, and we desperately need your help to make that happen.

Easy

The easiest way to contribute is to simply use MiCV as part of your own typical scRNA-seq analysis pipeline and report back to us via email or the issue tracker about:

  • What you like

  • What you don’t like

  • What features you think would be nice to have

  • What you think are extraneous features

This kind of feedback enables us to make better decisions about where to spend our (small) amount of extra time upgrading and refining MiCV to better suit the most users.

In a similar vein, informative bug reports are an excellent way to contribute, as they direct our attention to issues we didn’t forsee in the design and testing phases of MiCV’s development. Informative bug reports, in our eyes, have the following information:

  • A clear and specific title

  • Some environment details

    • Are you running on our web server, or your own computer?

    • If your own computer:

      • What processor are you using?

      • What OS are you running it on?

      • How much RAM do you have?

      • Are you using docker or a direct install?

  • What did you do? What steps did you take to get there?

  • What was the expected result?

  • What was the actual result?

  • If you have some screenshots/logs, we’d love to see them too

This information is really critical to helping track down the issue you’ve discovered, which is the first step in actually addressing that issue. We really appreciate you trying to provide as much of this information as you can!

Medium

Adding or updating some of documentation for MiCV would be a more advanced way to contribute, and for users new to the collaborative open-source software scene could be a great way to dip your feet into the world of git, as you’ll need to:

  • Fork the MiCV repository to your github account

  • Clone your fork of the MiCV repository to your computer

  • Make your changes to the docs (_.rst files)

  • Commit those changes

  • Push those changes up to your own github repository

  • Make a pull request to merge your forked MiCV repository with the main one

This process is easier once you’ve done it a few times, but can be quite daunting for someone just wanting to fix a typo. Nevertheless, if you’re feeling up to it, we encourage you to give it a shot and welcome your future pull requests!

Hard

Actually digging into the codebase to help fix some bugs or add in new features can be challenging, but we of course encourage it as well! We’ve put together a code guide (see: The code) that describes some of the basic structure and concepts necessary to dive in, but we know it doesn’t cover everything. If there’s something in particular you are keen to get included in MiCV, let us know and we can help you get started with your own contribution.