Contributing to Biome.jl

🌱 Thanks for your interest in contributing!

Biome.jl welcomes bug reports, feature requests, documentation fixes, and crucially: new PFT (Plant Functional Type) definitions for our community-maintained PFT database.

This page explains the different ways you can help, how to open Issues and Pull Requests (PRs), our development workflow, and how to contribute PFTs.

Ways to contribute

Report bugs and propose enhancements via [Issues].
Improve documentation (typos, examples, tutorials).
Add or refine tests to increase reliability.
Performance: profiling and optimizing hot paths.
Add PFTs to our shared PFT database (see below).
Add new biome schemes or improve plotting/IO utilities.

Community guidelines

Be respectful and constructive.
Prefer public discussions (Issues / PRs) so others can learn too.
Ask questions: early—maintainers are happy to help with scope and design.

Opening an Issue

Before filing a new issue, please:

Search existing issues to avoid duplicates.
Include:
- A clear title and minimal reproducible example (if applicable).
- Expected vs. actual behavior.
- Environment details (Julia version, OS, package versions).
- For performance issues: timing info, data sizes, and a short profile if possible.

Pull Request (PR) workflow

Fork the repo and create a feature branch: bash git checkout -b yourname/short-feature-name`
Make focused changes and add tests. Keep PRs small if possible.
Run tests locally.
Document any new user-facing features in the docs.
Open the PR
Check the CI status and address review comments.