HILA project is a Free and Open Source (FOSS) project maintained and managed by Prof. Kari Rummukainen.
General Public License version 2 and Apache 2.0 are chosen as HILA project's licenses. GPLV2 covers most of source codes of the lattice functionality except hilapp, which is licensed under Apache. Under these licenses, the developments of HILA are in fact community-driven. Thus HILA's users and developers are expected and welcomed to send back their developments of source codes back to upstream HILA repository.
To keep development organized, collaborative, and high quality, we follow a branch-based development model designed to support both new contributors and experienced maintainers. Here’s how the repository is structured and how contributions are managed:
Branch Structure: We use a feature branch workflow, where all new work happens in separate branches. This makes it easier to review, test, and track changes without affecting others. The main development branch is named "main" (renamed from master), and it acts as a stable pre-release branch. Only tested and reviewed feature branches get merged here.
The main branch reflects the latest state of the project that is considered stable enough for integration but may not yet be part of an official release. Official releases are created by tagging specific commits from the main branch. These tags follow a consistent naming pattern (e.g., v1.2.0 v0.4.15).
Feature Branches: Whether you're fixing a bug, adding a new feature, or working on documentation, your changes should always start in a new feature branch. This applies to all kinds of contributions—whether you're improving core functionalities or working on application-level additions.
Pull Request: Before submitting a pull request, make sure your feature branch is up to date with main, and that your changes have been tested where applicable.
This means your local main branch should be synchronized with upstream before your feature branch is merged. After successful testing within synchronized upstream main, new features can be shipped into upstream HILA repository by sending pull request. Maintainer or reviewers review and merge feature branches into upstream main once they meet the project's standards for stability and quality.
The contributors of HILA project are researchers and students of computational field theories. One could find the information of contributions from Github insight