Information for developers and contributors
===========================================

OpenPiv need developers to improve further. Your support, code and contribution is very welcome and 
we are grateful you can provide some. Please send us an email to openpiv-develop@googlegroups.com
to get started, or for any kind of information.

We use `git <http://git-scm.com/>`_ for development version control, and we have a main repository on `github <https://github.com/>`_.


Development workflow
--------------------
This is absolutely not a comprehensive guide of git development, and it is only an indication of our workflow.

1) Download and install git. Instruction can be found `here <http://help.github.com/>`_.
2) Set up a github account.
3) Clone OpenPiv repository using::

    git clone http://github.com/alexlib/openpiv-python.git
    
4) create a branch `new_feature` where you implement your new feature.
5) Fix, change, implement, document code, ...
6) From time to time fetch and merge your master branch with that of the main repository.
7) Be sure that everything is ok and works in your branch.
8) Merge your master branch with your `new_feature` branch.
9) Be sure that everything is now ok and works in you master branch.
10) Send a `pull request <http://help.github.com/pull-requests/>`_.

11) Create another branch for a new feature.

Which language can i use?
-------------------------
As a general rule, we use Python where it does not make any difference with code speed. In those situations where Python speed is
the bottleneck, we have some possibilities, depending on your skills and background. If something has to be written from scratch
use the first language from the following which you are confortable with: cython, c, c++, fortran. If you have existing, debugged, tested code that
you would like to share, then no problem. We accept it, whichever language may be written in!

Things OpenPiv currently needs, (in order of importance)
--------------------------------------------------------
* The implementation of advanced processing algorithms
* Good documentations
* Flow field filtering and validation functions
* Cython wrappers for c/c++ codes.
* a good graphical user interface

