Development

Development

how to contribute

Stan is open source because we want your input to help make Stan’s code and documentation better.

Suggest or Discuss Code Patches

To suggest or discuss small patches, such as localized bug fixes, the users group is the best venue. For larger patches, the discussion should move to the developers group.

Contribute Code Patches

If you’d like to contribute code, please submit it through a Git pull request. The developer process for creating a Git pull request is described on the Stan Wiki.

After code review, testing, and merging, all code is distributed under the same open-source license of the package to which it belongs (GPL for RStan, PyStan; BSD for CmdStan, C++ API; CC BY for documentation).

To Do List and Projects

Larger project design documents and goals, as well as the developer process followed by Stan, are listed in various places on:

There is a top-level list that is in the process of being moved over to the issue tracker.

Join the Development Team

The Stan development team is always looking for developers willing to get their hands dirty with C++, R, or Python design, coding, documentation, testing, and maintenance.

The current list of bugs and feature requests we would like to implement is available on the interface-specific issue trackers.

If you’d like to join the development team and gain push access to the Stan code repository, please let us know by first requesting to join the developers group. Please include a brief description of your programming background and what you’d like to contribute.

Source Repositories

Stan’s source is managed through the Git version control system and hosted by GitHub. All of the source repositories, including the math library, Stan’s core API (language and inference), and all of the interfaces, add-ons, and example models are listed here: