JuliaFEM.jl/docs/contributor/README.md

title, description, date, author, categories, keywords, audience, level, type

title	description	date	author	categories	keywords	audience	level	type
JuliaFEM Contributor Manual	Technical guide for developers and contributors	2025-11-09	Jukka Aho	development contributor guide	juliafem development architecture testing performance	developers	advanced	manual

Audience: Developers, contributors, advanced users who want to extend or modify JuliaFEM.

This manual is technical and detailed - it explains HOW the code works and WHY we made certain design choices.

What's Here

• Testing Philosophy: How and why we test
• Coding Standards: Required conventions for all contributions (variable names, types, performance)
• Architecture: Module structure, data flow, key abstractions
• Performance: Zero-allocation design, profiling, benchmarking
• Adding Elements: How to implement new element types
• CI/CD: Continuous integration, releases, versioning
• Git Workflow: Branching, commits, pull requests

What's NOT Here

• User tutorials (see docs/user/ for that)
• Deep mathematical theory (see docs/book/ for that)
• "How do I solve problem X?" (that's user docs)

Philosophy

"Show me the code AND tell me why."

We assume you:

• Know Julia reasonably well
• Understand FEM basics
• Want to add features or fix bugs
• Care about performance and correctness
• Need to understand design rationale

Before Contributing

1. Read Testing Philosophy
2. Follow Coding Standards - REQUIRED for all contributions
3. Understand Architecture
4. Check Performance Guidelines
5. Review Git Workflow

Key Principles

• Type stability: No Any, no Dict without types
• Zero allocations: Hot paths should allocate nothing
• Immutability: Prefer struct over mutable struct
• Composition: Use tuples and free functions, not OOP hierarchies
• Explicit: No magic, user knows what happens
• Test first: Write tests before fixing bugs

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Start here: Testing Philosophy | Architecture Overview