Development Workflow

Helpful resources

Psiexperiment leverages Enaml both for building the user-interface and for implementing a plugin-based system. Extending psiexperiment requires familiarity with the Enaml Workbench plugin framework.

Setting up your environment

The recommended way to develop psiexperiment is to use an editable install within a dedicated virtual environment.

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/bburan/psiexperiment
cd psiexperiment

2. Create a virtual environment

Using venv:

python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate  # On Windows: venv\Scripts\activate

Using conda:

conda create -n psi-dev python=3.10
conda activate psi-dev

3. Install in editable mode

Install psiexperiment along with its development, documentation, and testing dependencies:

pip install -e .[dev,docs,test]

4. Configure your environment

Set the PSI_CONFIG environment variable to point to a local configuration file for development. This prevents your development work from interfering with any production installs.

# On Windows (PowerShell)
$env:PSI_CONFIG = "C:/path/to/your/dev/config.py"

# On Linux/macOS
export PSI_CONFIG="/path/to/your/dev/config.py"

Then, initialize your development folders:

psi-config create --base-directory ./dev_root
psi-config create-folders

Running Tests

Tests are written using pytest. To run the full test suite:

pytest tests

Building Documentation

Documentation is built using Sphinx. To generate the HTML version:

cd docs
make html

The output will be located in docs/build/html.

Updating API Documentation

To regenerate the API reference files from the source code:

cd docs
sphinx-apidoc ../psi -o source/api

Contributing

Branching: Create a new feature branch for your changes.
Coding Standards: Follow PEP 8 and ensure all new Enaml code follows the declarative patterns established in the core plugins.
Tests: Include new tests for any features or bug fixes.
Pull Requests: Submit a PR to the main repository for review.