Warning: This document is for an old version of Rasa NLU.

Contributing

Contributions are very much encouraged! Please create an issue before doing any work to avoid disappointment.

We created a tag that should get you started quickly if you are searching for interesting topics to get started.

Python Conventions

Python code should follow the pep-8 spec.

Python 2 and 3 Cross Compatibility

To ensure cross compatibility between Python 2 and 3 we prioritize Python 3 conventions. Keep in mind that:

  • all string literals are unicode strings
  • division generates floating point numbers. Use // for truncated division
  • some built-ins, e.g. map and filter return iterators in Python 3. If you want to make use of them import the Python 3 version of them from builtins. Otherwise use list comprehensions, which work uniformly across versions
  • use io.open instead of the builtin open when working with files
  • The following imports from __future__ are mandatory in every python file: unicode_literals, print_function, division, and absolute_import

Please refer to this cheat sheet to learn how to write different constructs compatible with Python 2 and 3.

Code of conduct

Rasa NLU adheres to the Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct. By participating, you are expected to uphold this code.

Documentation

Everything should be properly documented. To locally test the documentation you need to install

brew install sphinx
pip install sphinx_rtd_theme

After that, you can compile and view the documentation using:

cd docs
make html
cd _build/html
python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8000 .
# python 3: python -m http.server

The documentation will be running on http://localhost:8000/.

Code snippets that are part of the documentation can be tested using

make doctest