docs/dev-install.md

docs/dev-install.md

@@ -0,0 +1,29 @@
+# Setup a development environment
+
+Once [PDM] and [Nox] are installed, it is very easy to setup a development environment for
+PyLandStats. On most systems, one can install PDM and Nox with [Pipx], with something like:
+
+```sh
+python3 -m pip install pipx
+python3 -m pipx ensurepath
+```
+
+and then in a new terminal:
+
+```sh
+pipx install pdm
+pipx install nox
+```
+
+Once PDM is installed, clone the PyLandStats repo and run `make` from the root
+directory. This should install a dedicated local virtual environment `.venv`.
+You can then activate it and run the tests.
+
+Note that there are few other targets in the `Makefile` useful for developers. In
+particular, it is good to periodically recompute the dependencies written in
+the `pdm.lock` file (with `make lock`) to check if new packages uploaded on PyPI
+do not break PyLandStats. It is reasonable to do this in a dedicated PR.
+
+[nox]: https://nox.thea.codes
+[pdm]: https://pdm-project.org
+[pipx]: https://github.com/pypa/pipx

docs/index.rst

@@ -18,6 +18,7 @@ Open-source library to compute landscape metrics in the Python ecosystem (NumPy,
    :maxdepth: 1
    :caption: Development:
 
+   dev-install
    changelog
    contributing
 
@@ -41,14 +42,15 @@ which will install PyLandStats and all of its dependencies. Alternatively, you c
 
     $ pip install pylandstats
 
-
 Nevertheless, note that the `BufferAnalysis` and `SpatioTemporalBufferAnalysis` classes make use of `geopandas <https://github.com/geopandas/geopandas>`_, which cannot be installed with pip. If you already have `the dependencies for geopandas <https://geopandas.readthedocs.io/en/latest/install.html#dependencies>`_ installed in your system, you might then install PyLandStats with the `geo` extras as in:
 
     $ pip install pylandstats[geo]
 
 and you will be able to use the `BufferAnalysis` and `SpatioTemporalBufferAnalysis` classes (without having to use conda).
 
 
+
+
 Indices and tables
 ==================
 * :ref:`genindex`