Contributing to pilotr • pilotr

Thank you for considering a contribution. Issues and pull requests are both welcome, whether they fix a bug, improve the documentation or add a feature.

pilotr ships as twin packages, R and Python, from this one repository. The R package lives in r/pilotr/ and the Python package in python/, with the no-code app in app-lite/. All three consume the same portable JSON design specification (documented in spec/), and the two packages share a random-number contract so that, given the same specification and seed, they produce bit-identical data. A change to the generative core therefore usually needs to land in both packages, keeping that contract intact.

Reporting a problem or suggesting a feature

Please open an issue at https://github.com/pablobernabeu/pilotr/issues. A small reproducible example helps a great deal; for a simulation bug, a minimal design specification plus the seed is ideal, along with the output of sessionInfo() (R) or your Python version.

Setting up for development

Working from a clone of the repository, the R package:

pak::pak(c("devtools", "roxygen2", "testthat", "spelling"))
devtools::document("r/pilotr")   # regenerate man/ and NAMESPACE after editing roxygen
devtools::test("r/pilotr")       # run the test suite
devtools::check("r/pilotr")      # a full R CMD check

The Python package:

pip install -e "./python[dev]"
cd python
pytest                        # run the test suite
python examples/parity_check.py   # confirm cross-language agreement

Conventions

British spelling throughout. The generative core stays dependency-free in Python (scipy, statsmodels and pandas are optional extras for the power tools), and the R package keeps its Imports minimal. Outputs are bit-identical across the two languages given the same specification and seed; python/examples/parity_check.py exercises that contract and must stay green. pilotr handles no credentials and makes no network requests.

Submitting a pull request

Base your work on main, keep the change focused, and add or update tests and documentation alongside the code. A scheduled continuous-integration workflow runs both test suites against the latest released dependency versions, and the website build exercises the vignettes and guides on every push to main.

By contributing you agree that your contribution is licensed under the same MIT licence as the package, and that you will follow the Code of Conduct.