Coconut Contributing Guidelines

Anyone is welcome to submit an issue or pull request regardless of whether or not they have read this document. The purpose of this document is simply to explain the contribution process and the internals of how Coconut works to make contributing easier.

Asking Questions

If you are thinking about contributing to Coconut, please don’t hesitate to ask questions at Coconut’s Gitter! That includes any questions at all about contributing, including understanding the source code, figuring out how to implement a specific change, or just trying to figure out what needs to be done.

Contribution Process

Contributing to Coconut is as simple as

  1. forking Coconut on GitHub,
  2. making changes to the develop branch, and
  3. proposing a pull request.

Contributor Friendly Issues

Want to help out, but don’t know what to work on? Head over to Coconut’s open issues and look for ones labeled “contributor friendly.” Contributor friendly issues are those that require less intimate knowledge of Coconut’s inner workings, and are thus possible for new contributors to work on.

File Layout

  • DOCS.md

    • Markdown file containing detailed documentation on every Coconut feature. If you are adding a new feature, you should also add documentation on it to this file.
  • FAQ.md

    • Markdown file containing frequently asked questions and their answers. If you had a question you wished was answered earlier when learning Coconut, you should add it to this file.
  • HELP.md

    • Markdown file containing Coconut’s tutorial. The tutorial should be a streamlined introduction to Coconut and all of its most important features.
  • Makefile

    • Contains targets for installing Coconut, building the documentation, checking for dependency updates, etc. The target make dev will automatically install the full Coconut developer environment.
  • setup.py

    • Using information from requirements.py and constants.py to install Coconut. Also reads README.rst to generate the PyPI description.
  • conf.py

    • Sphinx configuration file for Coconut’s documentation.
  • coconut

    • __coconut__.py
      • Mimics the Coconut header by generating and executing it when imported. Used by the REPL.
    • __init__.py
      • Includes the implementation of the %coconut IPython magic.
    • __main__.py
      • Imports and runs main from main.py.
    • constants.py
      • All constants used across Coconut are defined here, including dependencies, magic numbers/strings, etc.
    • convenience.py
      • Contains cmd, version, setup, and parse functions as convenience utilities when using Coconut as a module. Documented in DOCS.md.
    • exceptions.py
      • All of the exceptions raised by Coconut are defined here, both those shown to the user and those used only internally.
    • highlighter.py
      • Contains Coconut’s Pygments syntax highlighter, as well as modified Python highlighters that don’t fail if they encounter unknown syntax.
    • main.py
      • Contains main and main_run, the entry points for the coconut and coconut-run commands, respectively.
    • requirements.py
      • Processes Coconut’s requirements from constants.py into a form setup.py can use, as well as checks for updates to Coconut’s dependencies.
    • root.py
      • root.py creates and executes the part of Coconut’s header that normalizes Python built-ins across versions. Whenever you are writing a new file, you should always add from coconut.root import * to ensure compatibility with different Python versions. root.py also sets basic version-related constants.
    • terminal.py
      • Contains utilities for displaying messages to the console, mainly logger, which is Coconut’s primary method of logging a message from anywhere.
    • command
      • __init__.py
        • Imports everything in command.py.
      • cli.py
        • Creates the ArgumentParser object used to parse Coconut command-line arguments.
      • command.py
        • Contains Command, whose start method is the main entry point for the Coconut command-line utility.
      • mypy.py
        • Contains objects necessary for Coconut’s --mypy flag.
      • util.py
        • Contains utilities used by command.py, including Prompt for getting syntax-highlighted input, and Runner for executing compiled Python.
      • watch.py
        • Contains objects necessary for Coconut’s --watch flag.
    • compiler
      • __init__.py
        • Imports everything in compiler.py.
      • compiler.py
        • Contains Compiler, the class that actually compiles Coconut code. Compiler inherits from Grammar in grammar.py to get all of the basic grammatical definitions, then extends them with all of the handlers that depend on the compiler’s options (e.g. the current --target). Compiler also does pre- and post-processing, including replacing strings with markers (pre-processing) and adding the header (post-processing).
      • grammar.py
        • Contains Grammar, the class that specifies Coconut’s grammar in PyParsing. Coconut performs one-pass compilation by attaching “handlers” to specific grammar objects to transform them into compiled Python. grammar.py contains all basic (non-option-dependent) handlers.
      • header.py
        • Contains getheader, which generates the header at the top of all compiled Coconut files.
      • matching.py
        • Contains Matcher, which handles the compilation of all Coconut pattern-matching, including match statements, destructuring assignment, and pattern-matching functions.
      • util.py
        • Contains utilities for working with PyParsing objects that are primarily used by grammar.py.
    • icoconut
      • __init__.py
        • Imports everything from icoconut/root.py.
      • __main__.py
        • Contains the main entry point for Coconut’s Jupyter kernel.
      • root.py
        • Contains the implementation of Coconut’s Jupyter kernel, made by subclassing the IPython kernel.
    • stubs
      • __coconut__.pyi
        • A MyPy stub file for specifying the type of all the objects defined in Coconut’s package header (which is saved as __coconut__.py).
  • tests

    • __init__.py

      • Imports everything in main_test.py.
    • __main__.py

      • When run, compiles all of the test source code, but does not run any tests. To run the tests, the command make test, or a pytest command to run a specific test, is necessary.
    • main_test.py

      • Contains TestCase subclasses that run all of the commands for testing the Coconut files in src.
    • src

      • extras.coco

        • Directly imports and calls functions in the Coconut package, including from convenience.py and icoconut.
      • runnable.coco

        • Makes sure the argument --arg was passed when running the file.
      • runner.coco

        • Runs main from cocotest/agnostic/main.py.
      • cocotest

        • Note: Files in the folders below all get compiled into the top-level cocotest directory. The folders are only for differentiating what files to compile on what Python version.
        • agnostic
          • __init__.coco
            • Contains a docstring that main.coco asserts exists.
          • main.coco
            • Contains the main test entry point as well as many simple, one-line tests.
          • specific.coco
            • Tests to be run only on a specific Python version, but not necessarily only under a specific --target.
          • suite.coco
            • Tests objects defined in util.coco.
          • tutorial.coco
            • Tests all the examples in TUTORIAL.md.
          • util.coco
            • Contains objects used in suite.coco.
        • python2
          • py2_test.coco
            • Tests to be run only on Python 2 with --target 2.
        • python3
          • py3_test.coco
            • Tests to be run only on Python 3 with --target 3.
        • python35
          • py35_test.coco
            • Tests to be run only on Python 3.5 with --target 3.5.