.. _support:

How you can help
================

Contact us
----------

If you are using SIMA, please consider emailing software@losonczylab.org to let
us know.  Knowledge of our user base is extremely helpful for planing new
features, attracting volunteers, and fundraising.  Words of thanks are also very
encouraging to the development team.


Spread the word
---------------

Please pass along information about SIMA to people who would be interested in
using it or contributing to its development.


Improve the software
--------------------

We welcome contributions to the SIMA package in many forms.

Bug reports
...........

Please report bugs to the `SIMA Issue Tracker
<https://github.com/losonczylab/sima/issues>`_.  When doing so, please adhere
to the following guidelines:

* Search the issues to make sure the problem has not already been addressed.
* Describe the problem in detail.
* Include a short example (e.g. a few lines) that reproduces the problem.

If you are not sure whether your problem is a bug, or simply a question about
how to use SIMA, please post your question to the User Support section of the
`SIMA forum <https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/sima-users>`_.

Feature requests
................

If you think that a new feature would make SIMA more helpful for your research, 
please add an issue to the `Issue Tracker
<https://github.com/losonczylab/sima/issues>`_. When doing so, please follow
the 

* Search to see if the feature has already been requested. If so, please add a comment
  to that issue. This comment can include additional information about your requirements
  or just help to give a sense of how many people desire a certain feature.
* If the feature has not already been requested, please create a new issue with a
  "feature request" tag. Please be specific as possible about your requirements.

Documentation
.............

We appreciate improvements to any parts of the documentation that are unclear,
incomplete, or incorrect. Please see the Development instructions for more
details on how to contribute to the documentation.

Development
...........

To contribute to the source code, please follow the `Fork & Pull model
<https://help.github.com/articles/using-pull-requests#fork--pull>`_ We have not
developed specific guidelines for SIMA, so please follow the principles
outlined in `SciPy's contributing guidelines
<http://docs.scipy.org/doc/scipy/reference/hacking.html>`_

The efforts of SIMA contributors are coordinated through the `Issue Tracker
<https://github.com/losonczylab/sima/issues>`_.  Also, feel free to post any
questions about contributing to the User Support section of the `SIMA forum
<https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/sima-users>`_.
