Contributing

This is a FOSS project — anyone interested in using, developing, or contributing is welcome. The project follows a KISS (Keep It Simple and Stupid) philosophy.

Reporting Issues

• Open a ticket on the repository GitHub Issues page
• Clearly describe the problem, including steps to reproduce for bugs
• Note the earliest version you know has the issue

Pull Requests

1. Fork the repository on GitHub
2. Create a topic branch from the default branch (main or master):

   git checkout -b fix/my_contribution

3. Test your changes with fobis build && bash scripts/run_tests.sh
4. Check for unnecessary whitespace: git diff --check
5. Submit a pull request with a clear commit message

Fortran Coding Style

• Clarity over brevity: real :: gas_ideal_air is better than real :: gia
• Single-character variable names only for loop counters
• Name all constants
• implicit none in every module and program
• Declare intent for all procedure arguments, ordered: pass arg → inout → in → out → optional
• Indent with spaces (not tabs), consistently with the surrounding code
• No trailing whitespace; blank lines must contain no spaces
• Use >, <, == instead of .gt., .lt., .eq.
• Avoid Windows-style CRLF line endings

Recommended git whitespace settings

[color]
  ui = true
[color "diff"]
  whitespace = red reverse
[core]
  whitespace = fix,-indent-with-non-tab,trailing-space,cr-at-eol

Commit style

Use Conventional Commits so that CHANGELOG.md is generated automatically from the git log:

Prefix	Purpose	Changelog section
feat:	New feature or capability	New features
fix:	Bug fix	Bug fixes
perf:	Performance improvement	Performance
refactor:	Code restructuring	Refactoring
docs:	Documentation only	Documentation
test:	Tests	Testing
build:	Build system	Build system
ci:	CI/CD pipeline	CI/CD
chore:	Maintenance	Miscellaneous

Append ! for breaking changes (feat!:, fix!:). Reference issues with #123 — they are auto-linked.

feat: add a parallel reader for binary files
fix(io): handle empty input files (#42)
feat!: rename the init procedure to initialize

---

Creating a release

Releases are fully automated via scripts/release.sh and GitHub Actions. The only steps needed are:

# Install git-cliff once (or download it from https://github.com/orhun/git-cliff/releases)
cargo install git-cliff

# Then, to release:
scripts/release.sh --patch   # v1.2.3 → v1.2.4
scripts/release.sh --minor   # v1.2.3 → v1.3.0
scripts/release.sh --major   # v1.2.3 → v2.0.0
scripts/release.sh v2.1.0    # explicit version

release.sh will ask for confirmation, then:

1. Regenerate CHANGELOG.md from the git log via git-cliff
2. Update VERSION
3. Commit with chore(release): vX.Y.Z
4. Create an annotated git tag
5. Push commit + tag

Pushing the tag triggers the GitHub Actions release workflow, which automatically:

• Packages a versioned tarball
• Publishes a GitHub release with the changelog section as release notes, attaching the tarball and scripts/install.sh

Tests, coverage and this documentation site are not part of the release workflow: they run on every branch push (ci.yml, docs.yml), so the tagged commit has already been tested and its documentation deployed.