Contributing

We welcome contributions from the community and are happy to have them. Please follow this guide when logging issues or making changes.

ROS Packages

Package Structure

TODO: should we encourage more packages, or keep the current structure?

General Code guidelines

• Add TODO when a minor code smell is found, e.g. a hard-coded number that should be a parameter. (You are then welcome to fix them and propose the fixes in a pull request!).
• Add docstrings to the code. To ease the setup in VSCode you can use the Python Docstring Generator extension (https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=njpwerner.autodocstring).
• Add comments expecially for the parts of the code that are not straightforward, or to explain why a certain approach was chosen.
• In Python, use type-hinting for the parameters and the return values of the functions, when it's not obvious (e.g. init function and callback functions).
• remove all commented code! Also unused imports and variables should be removed.

ROS nodes

• use a global parameter from the context list below to specify the context in which the node is running instead of hard-coding it. If a new context is needed, open a PR to add it to the list.
• Context list:
  • /sim: the node is running in the simulator (if False, the node is running on the car)
  • /measure: the node is running with additional measurements
  • /from_bag: the node is running from a rosbag
  • /racecar_version: the node is assuming the racecar to be <racecar_version>
• Use ROS logging functions to log messages, with the default logging level set to INFO.

An example is in the planner/spliner/src/spliner_node.py file.

ROS launch files

• document the arguments of the launch file with the doc attribute of the arg tag where reasonabele (e.g. when the arguments are limited to a set of few values)
• keep formatting consistent, by using the VSCode plugin for XML (https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=redhat.vscode-xml)

README.md

Make sure the readme of a package/core node is up to date and contains the following sections:

• Description
• Parameters
• Input/Output Topic Signature

An example is in the planner/spliner/README.md file.