Contribute

Sharing a notebook

If you would like to share a notebook for the examples or gallery pages, please send it (in Jupyter format) to this address.

Reviewing SageManifolds code

If you know about Python (*), please consider reviewing SageManifolds code under development for the next version of SageMath. Such a code is available as opened pull requests listed at this GitHub page (**). Please follow the reviewer guidelines.

(*) Even if you are not a Python guru, you can significantly contribute to a pull request review by checking the mathematical correctness and documentation quality of the proposed changes.

(**) Before February 2023, the SageMath development infrastructure was based on a Trac server; since then, it has been migrated to GitHub (cf. the migration page and this video).

Writing code

1. Starting from the latest sources

To write some code, you need to edit the Python source files. In the root directory of your SageMath install, hereafter called SAGE_ROOT (you can locate this directory by typing sage -root in a terminal or !sage -root in some cell of a Jupyter notebook), the SageManifolds code lies in two subdirectories:

• SAGE_ROOT/src/sage/tensor/modules/ for the pure algebraic part (tensors on free modules)
• SAGE_ROOT/src/sage/manifolds/ for the topological and differential parts

Before starting to modify the sources, make sure that you are using the latest stable version of SageMath (10.5 at the moment). Even better, you could work on the latest development version of SageMath (the so-called beta versions, for instance 10.6.beta0).

To download and install the development version of SageMath, proceed as follows. First of all, make sure the prerequisites needed to build SageMath from sources are installed on your computer: check this page or this page for Ubuntu/Debian. Then, create a (free) account at github.com, if you don't have any yet, and fork the repository sagemath/sage under USERNAME/sage, where USERNAME is your GitHub account name. Next type the following commands in a terminal from, let us say, your home directory (not the root directory of your current stable SageMath install):

git clone https://github.com/USERNAME/sage.git     (download SageMath sources into a new directory, named sage)
cd sage     (this directory will be the SAGE_ROOT directory)
git remote add upstream https://github.com/sagemath/sage.git
make configure
./configure
MAKE="make -j8" make     (compile SageMath on 8 threads; adapt to your CPU)

2. Coding your changes

Whatever method you choose (i.e. working in the src subdirectory of either your stable SageMath install or the development version), it is recommended to create a new git branch to store your changes, in order to revert easily to the original version:

git checkout -b my_changes     (creates the git branch my_changes and makes it the current branch)

Then edit or add some source files in SAGE_ROOT/src/sage/manifolds/ (or SAGE_ROOT/src/sage/tensor/modules/ for pure algebraic stuff). It is mandatory to follow the programming rules exposed in the Sage Developer’s Guide; in particular read carefully the section Writing Code for Sage.

If your changes regard other files than Python ones (e.g. Cython source files), you need to rebuild SageMath by typing (from the SAGE_ROOT directory):

./sage -b

3. Running doctests

Doctests are testable examples that are embedded in docstrings of Python classes and functions (more generally in comments part of Python source files). They are automatically tested via the command sage -t. So after your changes, you should run

./sage -t --long src/sage/manifolds/

Note that -t can be replaced by -tp to run doctests in parallel (cf. ./sage -t --help for the full list of options controlling doctest runs). You should also check that all the new functions that you have introduced have doctests:

./sage -coverage src/sage/manifolds/

4. Generating and checking the documentation

Please take time to document your changes as much as possible, especially by providing examples of use in the docstrings following these rules. If you have added new source files, you may have to edit some rst files in SAGE_ROOT/src/doc/en/reference/manifolds/, so that the new files are taken into account in the documentation. Note that bibliographic references shall be put in the master file SAGE_ROOT/src/doc/en/reference/references/index.rst. To generate the documentation from the docstrings in Python source files, run (from the SAGE_ROOT directory)

./sage -docbuild reference/manifolds html

(if you get an error, you may need to regenerate the whole reference manual by make doc-clean && make doc). The generated documentation lies in

SAGE_ROOT/local/share/doc/sage/html/en/reference/manifolds/index.html

This is actually the manifolds section of the whole SageMath reference manual, which is at SAGE_ROOT/local/share/doc/sage/html/en/reference/index.html.

5. Sharing your changes

When you are ready to share your changes, create a new commit on your local git branch my_changes:

git commit -a -m "Short description of your changes"

git push --set-upstream origin my_changes

git push

That's it! Thank you for contributing to the project!