Skip to content

How to Contribute

Contributing

Everyone is welcome to contribute, and we value everybody’s contribution. Code is thus not the only way to help the community. Answering questions, helping others, reaching out and improving the documentation are immensely valuable contributions as well.

It also helps us if you spread the word: reference the library from blog posts on the awesome projects it made possible, shout out on X every time it has helped you, or simply star the repo to say "thank you".

Check out the official ludwig docs to get oriented around the codebase, and join the community!

Open Issues

Issues are listed at: https://github.com/ludwig-ai/ludwig/issues

If you would like to work on any of them, make sure it is not already assigned to someone else.

You can self-assign it by commenting on the Issue page with one of the keywords: #take or #self-assign.

Work on your self-assigned issue and eventually create a Pull Request.

Creating Pull Requests

  1. Fork the repository by clicking on the "Fork" button on the repository's page. This creates a copy of the code under your GitHub user account.

  2. Clone your fork to your local disk, and add the base repository as a remote:

git clone git@github.com:<your Github handle>/ludwig.git
cd ludwig
git remote add upstream https://github.com/ludwig-ai/ludwig.git
  1. Create a new branch to hold your development changes:
git checkout -b a-descriptive-name-for-my-changes

Do not* work on the master branch.

  1. Set up a development environment by running the following command in a virtual environment:
pip install -e .

The above command will install only the packages in "requirements.txt" in the developer mode. If you would like to be able to potentially make changes to the overall Ludwig codebase, then use the following command:

pip install -e .[full]

Please note that in certain Shell environments (e.g., the Z shell), the dependencies in brackets have to be quoted:

pip install -e ."[full]"

If you do not need access to the entire Ludwig codebase, but just want to be able to run pytest on the essential functionality, then you would replace the above command with:

pip install -e .[test]

(Please use pip install -e ."[test]" where your Shell environment requires quotes around the square brackets.)

For the full list of the optional dependencies available in Ludwig, please see Installation Guide and "setup.py" in the root of the Ludwig repository.

  1. On MacOS with Apple Silicon, if this installation approach runs into errors, you may need to install the following prerequisites:
brew install cmake libomp

This step requires homebrew to be installed on your development machine.

  1. Install and run pre-commit:
pip install pre-commit
pre-commit install

  1. Finally, if during the installation of horovod, the exception ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'packaging' occurs, you may need to disable horovod (that means you will need train with another backend, just not horovod). To do that, edit the file requirements_extra.txt and comment out the line that begins with horovod. After that, please execute the long pip install command given in the previous step. With these work-around provisions, your installation should run to completion successfully. If you are still having difficulty, please reach out with the specifics of your environment in our Discord Community Discord.

  2. Develop features on your branch.

  3. Format your code by running pre-commits so that your newly added files look nice:

pre-commit run

Pre-commits also run automatically when committing.

  1. Once you're happy with your changes, make a commit to record your changes locally:
git add .
git commit

It is a good idea to sync your copy of the code with the original repository regularly. This way you can quickly account for changes:

git fetch upstream
git rebase upstream/master

Push the changes to your account using:

git push -u origin a-descriptive-name-for-my-changes
  1. Once you are satisfied, go the webpage of your fork on GitHub. Click on "Pull request" to send your contribution to the project maintainers for review.

Other tips

  • Add unit tests for any new code you write.
  • Make sure tests pass. See the Developer Guide for more details.

Attribution

This contributing guideline is adapted from huggingface, available at https://github.com/huggingface/datasets/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md.

Code of Conduct

Please be mindful of and adhere to the Linux Foundation's Code of Conduct when contributing to Ludwig.