Contributing

There are two primary ways of contributing to SUNDIALS. The first way is by particpating in the development of SUNDIALS directly through contributions of code to the primary SUNDIALS repository. This is the best way to contribute bug fixes and minor improvements. At this time, the SUNDIALS team does not have the resources to review and take in large additions to the code or significant new features. Larger additions can be contributed as a SUNDIALS “addon” which is a component that may be optionally downloaded by users and then compiled and installed with SUNDIALS.

Note

New SUNDIALS developers should read the Developer Guide guide for information on how to participate in SUNDIALS development.

Direct Contributions via Pull Requests

Direct contributions to SUNDIALS are made by opening a Pull Request.

All new contributions to SUNDIALS must be made under the BSD 3-clause license. The SUNDIALS team will not accept any file previously released under any other open source license. By submitting code, the contributor gives irreversible consent to the redistribution and/or modification of the contributed source code.

Please ensure that any pull request includes user guide additions or changes as appropriate, has been tested, and includes a test for any added features.

Any added files submitted with a pull request must contain a header section at the top including the originating author’s name and file origin date as well as a pointer to the SUNDIALS LICENSE and NOTICE files.

The act of submitting a pull request (with or without an explicit Signed-off-by tag) will be understood as an affirmation of the following Developer’s Certificate of Origin (DCO).

Developer Certificate of Origin
Version 1.1

Copyright (C) 2004, 2006 The Linux Foundation and its contributors.
1 Letterman Drive
Suite D4700
San Francisco, CA, 94129

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this
license document, but changing it is not allowed.


Developer's Certificate of Origin 1.1

By making a contribution to this project, I certify that:

(a) The contribution was created in whole or in part by me and I
   have the right to submit it under the open source license
   indicated in the file; or

(b) The contribution is based upon previous work that, to the best
   of my knowledge, is covered under an appropriate open source
   license and I have the right under that license to submit that
   work with modifications, whether created in whole or in part
   by me, under the same open source license (unless I am
   permitted to submit under a different license), as indicated
   in the file; or

(c) The contribution was provided directly to me by some other
   person who certified (a), (b) or (c) and I have not modified
   it.

(d) I understand and agree that this project and the contribution
   are public and that a record of the contribution (including all
   personal information I submit with it, including my sign-off) is
   maintained indefinitely and may be redistributed consistent with
   this project or the open source license(s) involved.

The DCO lets us know that you are entitled to contribute this code to SUNDIALS and that you are willing to have it used in distributions and derivative works.

By including the DCO signature, you are stating that one or more of the following is true of your contribution:

  1. You created this contribution/change and have the right to submit it to SUNDIALS; or

  2. You created this contribution/change based on a previous work with a compatible open source license; or

  3. This contribution/change has been provided to you by someone who did 1 or 2 and you are submitting the contribution unchanged.

  4. You understand this contribution is public and may be redistributed as open source software under the BSD license.

All commits submitted to the SUNDIALS project need to have the following sign off line in the commit message:

Signed-off-by: Jane Doe <jdoe@address.com>

Replacing Jane Doe’s details with your name and email address.

If you’ve set user.name and user.email in your Git configuration, you can automatically add a sign off line at the end of the commit message by using the -s option (e.g., git commit -s).

Contributions via SUNDIALS Addons

SUNDIALS “addons” are community developed code additions for SUNDIALS that can be subsumed by the SUNDIALS build system so that they have full access to all internal SUNDIALS symbols. The intent is for SUNDIALS addons to function as if they are part of the SUNDIALS library, while allowing them to potentially have different licenses (although we encourage BSD-3-Clause still), code style (although we encourage them to follow the SUNDIALS style outlined here), and they are not maintained by the SUNDIALS team.

Creating an addon

To create a SUNDIALS addon and use it there are a few things you need to do:

  1. In your addon project, ensure that you have a CMakeLists.txt that uses the sundials_add_library CMake macro to create the library target. The best thing to do is simply copy from, or refer to, a CMakeLists.txt in the SUNDIALS src directory.

  2. Follow the steps in the README.md file in the external/ directory in the root of the SUNDIALS source code.

An example addon is available here.

Friends of SUNDIALS

The SUNDIALS team maintains a list of some SUNDIALS addons in our Friends of SUNDIALS repository. These addons are not maintained by the SUNDIALS team, but have been developed in consultation with us. Currently we are only adding projects for existing collaborations. Please contact the development team if you are interested in collaborating on an addon.