How can you contribute to the Dynare Project ?
As a free and open-source software project, we think of Dynare as a community. Though primary development is undertaken to varying degrees by a core team, we encourage others to be involved in any way that interests them. That could be anything from attending one of our events, to participating actively in the Dynare Forum, to spotting and reporting bugs, to directly making changes to the codebase.
Come to one of our events
Every year we organize three events: the Dynare Summer School, the Dynare Conference and the Dynare Workshop for Advanced Users. These events are public and their announcements are posted on this website.
Participate in the forum
The Dynare Forum is a great resource to turn to when you’re stuck. Along with the manual, it should be a point of reference when working with Dynare.
As an advanced user, your contribution will be useful in several ways. First and foremost, you’ll be helping out others who are just beginning on the same path that you’re already on. Second, you may be able to bring a perspective to the table that’s different than that of a beginner and that of someone on the core team. Finally, your participation will help foster a larger sense of community and will hopefully allow you gain a deeper understanding of something you already understand well.
Reporting bugs
If you find a bug, we want to know about it! But, first, before you tell us about it, make sure it’s a real bug. Head over to the Dynare Forum and search for the problem you’ve encountered; maybe someone else has encountered the same issue and what you think is a bug is actually intentional behavior. If there’s nothing on the forum and you’re not certain it’s a bug, please post a question there. We’ll see it and respond accordingly. If, however, you’re sure it’s a real bug, please report it on our Gitlab Issue page. But! Before you do, ensure you are working with the latest version of Dynare.
- If reporting a bug in the stable version of Dynare:
Ensure the bug exists in the latest stable version of Dynare telling us exactly how to reproduce the problem.
- If reporting a bug in the unstable version of Dynare:
Ensure the bug exists in the most recent version of the Dynare source code. You can either test it by installing the latest Dynare snapshot or by compliing the source code from the Git repository.
If you have encountered a bug in the stable version of Dynare, there’s a chance we have already fixed it. You can see a list of bugs fixed on the fixed bugs Wiki page. There’s also a chance the bug has already been reported. You can see a list of reported bugs by checking both the known bugs Wiki page and the Gitlab Issue page.
Once you have ensured you’re working with the correct version of Dynare and
that this bug has not yet been reported, report the bug on our Gitlab Issue
page, providing all the code
necessary (.mod files, .m files, data) to reproduce the bug. If working
with a larger .mod file, please pare it down as much as possible. This will
help us find the bug more quickly.
NB: You will need to create an account on our GitLab instance to report a bug. Please be aware that account requests are manually validated, so be prepared to wait for a couple of hours or days before your account is created; if your account request is rejected, do not hesitate to contact us directly.
Code development
Detailed instructions on how to setup a local copy of the Dynare codebase and propose your changes can be found in the CONTRIBUTING.md file in the git repository.
As Dynare is free software licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), any enhancements you make to the Dynare codebase would need to be under GPL (or, in some specific circumstances, under some other compatible license) so that it could be merged back into Dynare.