Development setup#

This guide provides step-by-step instructions to set up your local development environment for contributing to Skchange.

Configuring Git#

You need to have a GitHub account and git installed on your machine.

Fork the Skchange repository.

Clone the forked repository to your local machine and move into it:

git clone https://github.com/<username>/skchange.git
cd skchange

Set the upstream remote branch to the original repository to be able to sync your fork later:

git remote add upstream https://github.com/NorskRegnesentral/skchange.git
git fetch upstream

Installing dependencies#

First, you need to have Python installed. We recommend using the latest Python version. Make sure to deactivate any active virtual environment before proceeding, as the following steps will create a new virtual environment for Skchange.

Create a virtual environment in your skchange project directory. We recommend using uv with the pip interface.
```
pip install uv
uv venv
```
This creates a virtual environment in a folder named .venv.
Activate the virtual environment.

On Windows:
```
.venv\Scripts\activate
```
On macOS/Linux:
```
source .venv/bin/activate
```
Install an editable version of Skchange with all development dependencies:
```
uv pip install -e .[dev]
```

Code quality checks#

We use pre-commit for automatic code quality checks. Pre-commit is installed as part of the development dependencies.

To enable pre-commit hooks, run the following command:

pre-commit install

At this point, you should be ready to start contributing to Skchange!

Visual Studio Code configuration#

Using Visual Studio Code (VS Code) with the right extensions can significantly enhance your development experience. Here is a recommended configuration.

Install VS Code.
Install the following extensions:
- Python (ms-python.python): Official Python extension for easily working with Python code.
- Ruff (charliermarsh.ruff): A fast Python linter and code formatter. This will help you adhere to the code style requirements enforced by pre-commit.
Make sure to select the created virtual environment as the interpreter in VS Code.

Updating the development environment#

It is good practice to regularly update your development environment to ensure you have the latest version of Skchange and its dependencies. If not, you may encounter issues when trying to merge your changes with the main codebase and running the continuous integration tests.

First, sync your fork with the upstream repository:

git fetch upstream
git checkout main
git merge upstream/main

Then update your dependencies to the latest allowed versions:

uv pip install -e .[dev] --upgrade