Contributing to Strawberry Fields

Thank you for taking the time to contribute to Strawberry Fields!

Strawberry Fields is a collaborative effort with the quantum photonics and quantum computation community - while we are not currently working on adding new features to Strawberry Fields, we invite you to make a fork of this repository to add improvements, test research ideas, or fit Strawberry Fields into your workflow.

How can I get involved in the community?

If you don't know where to start, start by checking out our documentation. Have a go working through some of the tutorials, and having a look at the Strawberry Fields API and code documentation to see how things work under the hood.

To chat directly with the team that designed and built Strawberry Fields, as well as members of our community - ranging from professors of quantum physics, to students, to those just interested in being a part of a rapidly growing industry - you can join our Slack channel.

Sometimes, it might take us a couple of hours to reply - please be patient!

How can I contribute?

It's up to you!

• Be a part of our community - chat to people in our Slack channel or our discussion forum, respond to questions, and provide exciting updates of the projects/experiments you are investigating with Strawberry Fields.

• Report bugs or contribute to our documentation - we are not accepting Pull Requests for new features at this time. We welcome contributions for bug fixes, security patches, and documentation improvements only. Thank you for your understanding. If you run into any bugs, make a bug report on our issue tracker.

• Build an application on top of Strawberry Fields - have an idea for an application, and Strawberry Fields provides the perfect computational backbone? Consider making a fully separate app that builds upon Strawberry Fields as a base. Ask us if you have any questions, and send a link to your application to support@xanadu.ai so we can highlight it in our documentation!

Appetite whetted? Keep reading below for all the nitty-gritty on reporting bugs, contributing to the documentation, and submitting pull requests.

Reporting bugs

We use the GitHub issue tracker to keep track of all reported bugs and issues. If you find a bug, or have an issue with Strawberry Fields, please submit a bug report! User reports help us make Strawberry Fields better on all fronts.

To submit a bug report, please work your way through the following checklist:

• Search the issue tracker to make sure the bug wasn't previously reported. If it was, you can add a comment to expand on the issue if you would like. If you're not sure, you can ask us in our Slack community, in the #sf_bug channel.

• Fill out the issue template. If you cannot find an existing issue addressing the problem, create a new issue by filling out the issue template. This template is added automatically to the comment box when you create a new issue. Please try and add as many details as possible!

• Try and make your issue as clear, concise, and descriptive as possible. Include a clear and descriptive title, and include all code snippets/commands required to reproduce the problem. If you're not sure what caused the issue, describe what you were doing when the issue occurred.

Suggesting features, document additions, and enhancements

We are not accepting Pull Requests for new features at this time. We welcome contributions for bug fixes, security patches, and documentation improvements only. Thank you for your understanding.

• For documentation additions, point us towards any relevant equations/papers/preprints, with the relevant sections/equations noted. Short descriptions of its use/importance would also be useful.

Forks

If you need a new or modified Strawberry Fields feature, simply make a fork of the master branch. We encourage everyone to have a go forking and modifying the Strawberry Fields source code. You will now have a copy of your own that you can modify!

General guidelines

• Do not make a pull request for minor typos/cosmetic code changes - make an issue instead.

Thank you for being part of Strawberry Fields!

- The Strawberry Fields team