Contributing doc

[parmentelat]

implementing your idea of providing a minimal doc on poetry to potential contributors

[parmentelat]

I'd be interested to know more about how to compile the C code on my end
I use a Mac Intel
I reckon this would fit in this new file ?

[parmentelat]

apologies, this is mostly already in README.md
forget about this PR

[jwg4]

Thanks anyway for this!

I am thinking about, when the current changes are ready, changing the documentation a bit. There would be

1. The main README with basic details about the package, what it does, how to use it.
2. A document for users which has all the technical info that someone needs who is running this code - for example how edge cases are handled, what errors are possible, how to interpret results. It would be technical but aimed as users not developers.
3. A document for developers which has all the details about how to build it, other info about contributing, and some details of how it works. It would be aimed only at people who want to work on the code - not just those who want to use it.

The answer to your question is that if you run poetry install it will try to build the C code. If you are set up to compile Python packages in C/C++ it should just work. If not it will give you an error, possibly about python.h. I don't know how you install the python dev packages on Mac, on Linux it's eg apt install python-dev. You obviously need a C compiler too.

If you do have a C compiler but you don't have python dev stuff, you can run the C tests using the Makefile (doesn't require poetry).