Guidelines

Welcome to the TemplateFlow project! We're excited you're here and want to contribute.

Imposter's syndrome disclaimer

Imposter's syndrome disclaimer¹: We want your help. No, really.

There may be a little voice inside your head that is telling you that you're not ready to be an open-source contributor; that your skills aren't nearly good enough to contribute. What could you possibly offer a project like this one?

We assure you - the little voice in your head is wrong. If you can write code at all, you can contribute code to open-source. Contributing to open-source projects is a fantastic way to advance one's coding skills. Writing perfect code isn't the measure of a good developer (that would disqualify all of us!); it's trying to create something, making mistakes, and learning from those mistakes. That's how we all improve, and we are happy to help others learn.

Being an open-source contributor doesn't just mean writing code, either. You can help out by writing documentation, tests, or even giving feedback about the project (and yes - that includes giving feedback about the contribution process). Some of these contributions may be the most valuable to the project as a whole, because you're coming to the project with fresh eyes, so you can see the errors and assumptions that seasoned contributors have glossed over.

Joining the conversation¶

TemplateFlow is maintained by a growing group of enthusiastic developers— and we're excited to have you join! Most of our discussions will take place on open issues.

We also encourage users to report any difficulties they encounter on NeuroStars, a community platform for discussing neuroimaging.

We actively monitor both spaces and look forward to hearing from you in either venue!

Before you start¶

Templates have a license to specify the terms under which they can be shared. TemplateFlow can only include templates that allow for redistribution. It is okay if the template requires attribution, but you need to make sure to add the attribution information into the template_description.json file.

What type of contribution are you making?¶

There are three different types of contributions you can make to TemplateFlow.

A new template space : This contribution involves adding a new space that does not currently exist. Let us say you have made a new pediatric space that you transform your images to; this would be a new template space. All the different MNI templates are each considered their own template space. Currently this requires writing permissions to the TemplateFlow repo. For now, if you do not have access open up an issue in the templateflow repo to say which template spaces should be added.

NIfTI images within an existing template space : This contribution involves adding to a template space that currently exists. An example of this would be adding a NIfTI file that is an atlas. You need to know which template space your atlas is in (Note: there are multiple MNI spaces).

Meta information : This contribution involves additional information about existing templates. These will generally be in .json or .tsv files. There are also transform files which help translate between templates.

Python client : You are implementing a new feature or fixing a bug of the Python client. Or you are improving its documentation. Please refer to the Python client area.

There are tutorials for each of these different types of contributions.

Template Style Guide¶

Please check the documentation about how templates are structure and appropriate names for their files.

Recognizing contributions¶

We welcome and recognize all contributions regardless their size, content or scope: from documentation to testing and code development.

Thank you!¶

You're awesome.

— Based on contributing guidelines from the STEMMRoleModels project.

The imposter syndrome disclaimer was originally written by Adrienne Lowe for a PyCon talk, and was adapted based on its use in the README file for the MetPy project. ↩