Contributor quickstart guide

After getting the source code from GitHub, there are three steps to start contributing:

• Set up a development environment

  Using mamba, or some flavor of the many virtual environment management tools, you can make sure the development version of SciPy does not interfere with any other local installations of SciPy on your machine.

• Build SciPy

  SciPy uses compiled code for speed, which means you might need extra dependencies to complete this step depending on your system - see building-from-source.

• Perform development tasks

  These can include any changes you want to make to the source code, running tests, building the documentation, running benchmarks, etc.

Basic workflow

Since SciPy contains parts written in C, C++, and Fortran that need to be compiled before use, make sure you have the necessary compilers and Python development headers installed. If you are using mamba, these will be installed automatically. If you are using pip, check which system-level dependencies you might need.

First, fork a copy of the main SciPy repository in GitHub onto your own account and then create your local repository via

git clone git@github.com:YOURUSERNAME/scipy.git scipy
cd scipy
git submodule update --init
git remote add upstream https://github.com/scipy/scipy.git

Next, set up your development environment. With system-level dependencies installed, execute the instructions in building-from-source.

For details on how to test your changes, see the more complete setup walkthrough in development-workflow.

Other workflows

There are many possible ways to set up your development environment. For more detailed instructions, see the contributor-toc.