Author email	david.bresteau@cea.fr
First edition	december 2023
Difficulty	Easy

5.1.1. Create an account & raise an issue on GitHub

We present here how to create a free account on GitHub so that as a user of PyMoDAQ, we will know where to ask for help to the PyMoDAQ community or report a bug.

This tutorial does not require any knowledge of Python or GitHub.

5.1.1.1. What is GitHub?

GitHub is a free cloud service that allows anyone to host an open-source project on distant servers. PyMoDAQ is hosted on GitHub. As a PyMoDAQ user, we should know about it, even if we are not interested in the code. Indeed GitHub does not only host code, but it also proposes several features around it that allow to ease the communication within the community around the program (users or maintainers). So if we face a problem with PyMoDAQ, that is where we should ask for help!

5.1.1.2. Create an account

Creating an account on GitHub is necessary if we want to open a discussion or raise an issue. This is free of charge and does not commit us to anything. Let’s go to the GitHub website. On the top right of the page, let’s click on Sign up and follow the guide.

5.1.1.3. Troubleshoot PyMoDAQ: raise an issue

Now that we have our own account on GitHub and are logged in. Let’s go to the PyMoDAQ GitHub account.

Here we have access to all the code of PyMoDAQ, and all the history of its development. But what we are looking for now is the place where to ask for help in case we are in trouble. For this we should click on the Issues tab.

Anytime we face a problem or a bug in the program we can raise an issue. Describe as precisely as possible our problem. A discussion will be opened with the maintainers who will try to help us. This is the most efficient way to troubleshoot PyMoDAQ because the history of the issues is conserved, which could be helpful to solve future problems. This contributes to the documentation of the code. We don’t need to know the code to raise an issue, and it is really helpful to improve the stability of the program, so we should not hesitate to do so!

Thanks to such functionalities, the PyMoDAQ GitHub account is the meeting point of the community around PyMoDAQ.