Improve CONTRIBUTING guidelines

.pre-commit-config.yaml

@@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ repos:
       - id: mypy
         args: [--ignore-missing-imports]
         files: ^pymc_bart/
-        additional_dependencies: [numpy<1.25.0, pandas-stubs]
+        additional_dependencies: [numpy<1.25.0, pandas-stubs==1.5.3.230304]
   - repo: https://github.com/pre-commit/pre-commit-hooks
     rev: v3.2.0
     hooks:

CONTRIBUTING.md

@@ -15,6 +15,16 @@ Thanks for your interest in contributing code to pymc_bart!
 
 **If this is your first time contributing to a project on GitHub, please read through our step by step guide to contributing to pymc_bart**
 
+### Local Development
+
+0. Create a virtual environment (optional, but strongly recommended)
+
+1. Install the library in editable mode
+
+```bash
+pip install -e .
+```
+
 ### Feature Branch
 
 1. From the fork of the pymc_bart repository, create a new branch for your feature.
@@ -42,8 +52,6 @@ git push origin feature_branch_name
 
 The repository has some code style checks in place. This will happen on every commit of a pull request. If you want to run the checks locally, you can do so by running the following command from the root of the repository:
 
-0. Create a virtual environment (optional, but strongly recommended)
-
 1. Install pre-commit
 
 ```bash
@@ -70,13 +78,57 @@ pre-commit run --all-files
 
 **Once you commit something the pre-commit hook will run all the checks**!
 
+In particular, if the commited changed have linting errors, the commit will try to fix them. If successful,you need to add the changes again (for example, `git add -u`) and commit again. If not successful, you need to fix the errors manually and commit again.
+
 You can skip this (for example when is WIP) by adding a flag (`-n` means no-verify)
 
 ```bash
 git commit -m"my message" -n
 ```
 
-**Remark:** One can, of course, install `ruff` in the Python environment to enable auto-format (for example in VS Code), but this is not strictly necessary. The specific versions of` ruff` and `mypy` must be only specified in `.pre-commit-config.yaml`. It should be the only source of truth! Hence, if you want to install them locally make sure you use the same versions (revisions `rev` in the config file) as in the config file.
+### Pre-Commit Components
+
+One can, of course, install `ruff` in the Python environment to enable auto-format (for example in VS Code), but this is not strictly necessary. The specific versions of` ruff` and `mypy` must be only specified in [`.pre-commit-config.yaml`](.pre-commit-config.yaml). It should be the only source of truth! Hence, if you want to install them locally make sure you use the same versions (revisions `rev` in the config file) as in the config file.
+
+#### Ruff
+
+Once installed locally as
+
+```
+pip install ruff==<VERSION>
+```
+
+You can check the lint as
+
+```bash
+ruff . --no-fix
+```
+
+You can allow `ruff` to fix the code by using the flag:
+
+```bash
+ruff . --fix
+```
+
+#### MyPy
+
+We use `mypy` to check the type annotations. Once installed locally as
+
+```bash
+pip install mypy==<VERSION>
+```
+
+You also need the `pandas-stubs` library with the version specified in the [`.pre-commit-config.yaml`](.pre-commit-config.yaml) file.
+
+```bash
+pip install pandas-stubs==<VERSION>
+```
+
+Now, you can check the type annotations as
+
+```bash
+mypy pymc_bart/.
+```
 
 ### Adding new features
 If you are interested in adding a new feature to pymc_bart,