A community developed Python package for plasma physics.
PlasmaPy is in an early stage of development. The goals of this project are described in our vision statement and an earlier conference poster:
- Murphy, Nicholas A, Huang, Yi-Min, & PlasmaPy Community. (2016, October). PlasmaPy: beginning a community developed Python package for plasma physics. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.163752
We recently created a guide on contributing to PlasmaPy, which also contains instructions on how to join our email list. New contributors are very welcome!
If you have any questions, please contact Nick Murphy at namurphy@cfa.harvard.edu, Yi-Min Huang at yiminh@princeton.edu, or Drew Leonard at andy.j.leonard@gmail.com.
There are multiple options to download the source code for PlasmaPy. The simplest is to select "Clone or Download" on our repository page. This will provide an option to download a zip file plus information on how to clone the repository. If you have git installed on your computer and you would like to use HTTPS (which is the default and easier to set up), then run:
git clone https://github.com/PlasmaPy/PlasmaPy.gitIf you have set up an SSH key, an equivalent and more secure command is:
git clone git@github.com:PlasmaPy/PlasmaPy.gitThe contributing to PlasmaPy guide has instructions on how to fork a repository so that you may make pull requests.
In the top level directory, run
pip install .or
python setup.py installPlasmaPy is presently being designed to be compatible with Python 3.6 and above, and does not guarantee support for Python 3.5 and below. PlasmaPy is not compatible with Python 2.
Imposter syndrome disclaimer: 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.
(This disclaimer was originally written by Adrienne Lowe for a PyCon talk, and was adapted by yt in their README file based on its use in the README file for the MetPy project. It was then adapted by PlasmaPy.)
PlasmaPy is licensed under a 3-clause BSD style license - see
LICENSE.md file in the top-level directory.