Developer Documentation

Since the source code for all of FOQUS is publicly available, the more adventurous user may wish to look at the inner-workings of FOQUS to get a better understand how it works, contribute a fix to a bug, or add new features to the source tree. Other members of our CCSI partnership (national laboratories, industry and academic institutions) may be more actively involved in the development of FOQUS.

This chapter describes at a high level how any such person can set themselves up for getting, building, running, testing, documenting and contributing to FOQUS development.

Development Tools, Technology and Process

FOQUS is primarily written in Python. We use the following software development tools, technologies and processes:

• GitHub is where the FOQUS source code resides.

• We make extensive use of GitHub’s Issue Tracker , Pull Requests and Project Boards for managing the development tasks using a modified Kanban development process.

• ReadTheDocs is used to generate and host our on-line documentation.

• For Continuous Integration (CI) we use GitHub Actions.

• Anaconda for isolating Python runtime and development environment.

Developer Setup

Working as a developer is similar to how a user would work with FOQUS with the exception that they will need a copy of the source to work with. Here is rough set of steps to get setup:

• Download and install Anaconda.

• In a terminal create a conda env in which to work:

  conda create --name ccsi-foqus -c conda-forge python=3.10 pywin32=306
  conda activate ccsi-foqus
  

• In a terminal, get the FOQUS source:

  conda activate ccsi-foqus
  cd CCSI-Toolset  # Or a dir of your choice
  git clone git@github.com:CCSI-Toolset/FOQUS.git  # Note: clone the FOQUS repo if you expect to contribute
  cd FOQUS
  

• Build and Install FOQUS as a developer:

  pip install -r requirements-dev.txt  # This will pick up both user and developer required packages.
  foqus  # Start the app
  

Pre-commit hooks (optional, but recommended)

Pre-commit hooks are scripts that are automatically run by Git “client-side” (i.e. on a developer’s local machine) whenever git commit is run. If the pre-commit scripts terminates with an error, the commit will be interrupted, requiring the developer to address the failure before being able to complete the commit.

Note

This is different (and complementary to) “server-side” checks, i.e. scripts that check the code on the side of the Git remote after the code is committed and pushed, such as the Continuous Integration (CI) suite triggered whenever a commit is pushed to an open PR in the FOQUS GitHub repository.

Pre-commit checks are especially useful to ensure that the code is formatted correctly before it is pushed to the FOQUS GitHub repository, which otherwise typically would cause the developer to 1) be notified by the failing CI check that the code wasn’t formatted; 2) run the formatter manually; 3) create a new commit with the formatting changes; 4) push the formatted code again.

FOQUS uses the pre-commit framework to manage a few hooks that are useful for FOQUS developers.

The pre-commit command is already installed as part of FOQUS’s developer dependencies. However, the pre-commit checks (i.e. the actual scripts that Git will be running) must be installed (using pre-commit install) as a separate step whenever the FOQUS repository is cloned:

pre-commit install

For more information, refer to the pre-commit “Quick Start” page.

Run Tests

From top level of foqus repo:

pytest
python foqus.py -s test/system_test/ui_test_01.py

Building the Docs locally

To build a local copy of the documentation:

cd FOQUS/docs
make clean
make html

Then open the file FOQUS/docs/build/html/index.html to view the results.

Contact and Support

There are multiple ways to contact the development team, get support, file a bug, make a feature request and even contribute code changes to FOQUS:

• Send a private email to ccsi-support@acceleratecarboncapture.org for contacting an internal set of developers.

• Subscribe to and send an email to our ccsi-users@acceleratecarboncapture.org public discussion forum to ask a question of the existing user base.

• Use any of the public GitHub features:

  • Read or start a new Discussion

  • Open a new Issue if you believe you’ve found a bug (please include detailed steps on how to reproduce the error, including if possible, screenshots and log files.) This is also where you can make feature requests.

  • Contribute changes to the FOQUS project by opening a Pull Request

General information about the Carbon Capture Simulation for Industry Impact (CCSI²) project, of which FOQUS is a part, can be found on the https://www.acceleratecarboncapture.org/ web site.