Triaging Issues

On the IPython repository, we strive to trust users and give them responsibility.
By using one of our bots, any user can close issues or add/remove
labels by mentioning the bot and asking it to do things on your behalf.

To close an issue (or PR), even if you did not create it, use the following:

@meeseeksdev close

This command can be in the middle of another comment, but must start on its
own line.

To add labels to an issue, ask the bot to tag with a comma-separated list of
tags to add:

@meeseeksdev tag windows, documentation

Only already pre-created tags can be added. So far, the list is limited to:
async/await, backported, help wanted, documentation, notebook,
tab-completion, windows

To remove a label, use the untag command:

@meeseeksdev untag windows, documentation

We'll be adding additional capabilities for the bot and will share them here
when they are ready to be used.

Opening an Issue

When opening a new Issue, please take the following steps:

1. Search GitHub and/or Google for your issue to avoid duplicate reports.
   Keyword searches for your error messages are most helpful.

2. If possible, try updating to main and reproducing your issue,
   because we may have already fixed it.

3. Try to include a minimal reproducible test case.

4. Include relevant system information. Start with the output of:

   python -c "import IPython; print(IPython.sys_info())"

   And include any relevant package versions, depending on the issue, such as
   matplotlib, numpy, Qt, Qt bindings (PyQt/PySide), tornado, web browser, etc.

Pull Requests

Some guidelines on contributing to IPython:

• All work is submitted via Pull Requests.
• Pull Requests can be submitted as soon as there is code worth discussing.
  Pull Requests track the branch, so you can continue to work after the PR is submitted.
  Review and discussion can begin well before the work is complete,
  and the more discussion the better.
  The worst case is that the PR is closed.
• Pull Requests should generally be made against main
• Pull Requests should be tested, if feasible:
  • bugfixes should include regression tests.
  • new behavior should at least get minimal exercise.
• New features and backwards-incompatible changes should be documented by adding
  a new file to the pr directory, see the README.md
  there for details.
• Don't make 'cleanup' pull requests just to change code style.
  We don't follow any style guide strictly, and we consider formatting changes
  unnecessary noise.
  If you're making functional changes, you can clean up the specific pieces of
  code you're working on.

GitHub Actions does
a pretty good job testing IPython and Pull Requests,
but it may make sense to manually perform tests,
particularly for PRs that affect IPython.parallel or Windows.

For more detailed information, see our GitHub Workflow.

Running Tests

All the tests can be run by using

pytest

All the tests for a single module (for example test_alias) can be run by using the fully qualified path to the module.

pytest IPython/core/tests/test_alias.py

Only a single test (for example test_alias_lifecycle) within a single file can be run by adding the specific test after a :: at the end:

pytest IPython/core/tests/test_alias.py::test_alias_lifecycle

Code style

• Before committing, run darker -r 60625f241f298b5039cb2debc365db38aa7bb522 <file path> to apply selective black formatting on modified regions using darker==1.5.1 and black==22.10.0
• As described in the pull requests section, please avoid excessive formatting changes; if a formatting-only commit is necessary, consider adding its hash to .git-blame-ignore-revs file.

Documentation

Sphinx documentation can be built locally using standard sphinx make commands. To build HTML documentation from the root of the project, execute:

pip install -r docs/requirements.txt   # only needed once
make -C docs/ html SPHINXOPTS="-W"

To force update of the API documentation, precede the make command with:

python3 docs/autogen_api.py

Similarly, to force-update the configuration, run:

python3 docs/autogen_config.py