Contributing

OpenMS

I have written a class for OpenMS I want to contribute. What should I do?
Basically, you must conform to the OpenMS Coding conventions :

1. Coding style (brackets, variable names, etc.) must conform to the conventions.
2. The class and all the members must be documented thoroughly.
3. A class test must exists, which tests each public member function.
4. You can check your code with the tool tools/checker.php. Call php tools/checker.php for detailed instructions.

When this is done, you can either

• post a patch to the mailing list or
• become a developer and commit your code to the SVN directly.

I want to implement a new file adapter. What is to be done?

1. First you should add a file adapter class to the include/OpenMS/FORMAT/ and source/FORMAT/ folders. The file adapter should implement a default constructor, a load method and a store method. Make sure your code conforms to the OpenMS Coding conventions .
2. For automatic file type recognition, you need to
   • register your new file type at the Type enum in /include/OpenMS/FORMAT/FileTypes.h,
   • flag the file type as supported in the isSupported method of /source/FORMAT/FileHandler.C and
   • register the file extension in the getTypeByFileName method of /source/FORMAT/FileHandler.C.
3. If the new file is a peak or feature file format you should also add it to loadExperiment or loadFeatures, respectively, of the FileHandler class.
4. To add the file format to the TOPPView open dialog, you have to modify the file /source/APPLICATIONS/TOPPViewBase.C. Add the file extensions to the filter_all and filter_single variables of the getFileList_ method.
5. To add your format to TOPP applications, add the file extension to the extensions list of the respective parameter:
   e.g. setValidStrings_("in_type", StringList::create("mzData,mzXML,mzML")); in FileInfo

TOPP

• Coming soon.