Writing examples is a very important part of being an IMP developer and one of the best ways to help people use your code. To write a (Python) example, create a file myexample.py in the example directory of an appropriate module. The first few lines of the script should should provide a brief overview of what the code in the module is trying to accomplish as well as key pieces of IMP functionality that it uses. (This is a comment parsed by Doxygen, so should start with the \example command.)

Note

Examples are run by the build system in the same way as unit tests, and so should run to completion in under 2 minutes. If your example takes longer than this, it is not a very good example! (For one, users will tire of waiting for it to finish.) The build system passes each example the --run_quick_test argument, so this can be used to run a faster subset (e.g. fewer iterations of an optimization). If you are trying to demonstrate the application of your method to a real biological system, you should write a biological system instead of an example.

The example should have enough comments that the reasoning behind each line of code is clear to someone who roughly understands how IMP in general works.

Examples must use methods like IMP::get_example_path() to access data in the example directory. This allows them to be run from anywhere (when they are run by ctest the working directory is not the directory the example is in).