Ongoing Development

Note

This is an open-source package. Feel free to contribute at any time :)

How to Contribute: General Information

Sfctools is open for your contribution. If you are interested in contributing to the code or the documentation, you are greatfully invited to do so! If you want to contribute to this repository, please discuss the changes you wish to make, or new features you want to introduce, with the core development team. Please also try to adapt your code style in accordance with the coding conventions and quality values of this repository. Read the Contributors License Agreement (CLA) and send a signed copy to Thomas Baldauf.

The current development status is available on our Gitlab repository: https://gitlab.com/dlr-ve/esy/sfctools

If you wish to make a small bug report or want to report an issue, open up a new issue in Gitlab (preferred) or contact the main developer (Thomas Baldauf)

Release Timeline

Dated 10/2022.

Release timeline for past and planned future releases

Planned Quarter

Version Number

Short Name

(Planned) Features

Q3-2021

0.3 - Alpha release

Michelada

Core functionalities

Q4-2021

0.4 - Beta release

Chicha
batch functionality,
first example projects

Q1-2022

0.5 - Beta release

Xocolatl
improved testing ,
additional example projects

Q1-2022 to Q3-2022

0.9.9 - Beta release (internal)
Kwas
release-ready (before publication),
first viable product, including the graphical user interface (before review)

Q4-2022

1.0.x - Stable beta release
Kwas
release-ready (befure publication),
first viable product, including the graphical user interface (before review)
improvements after first feedback

Q2-2023

1.1.x - Paper release
Spotykach
peer-reviewed version, JOSS publication

Q4-2023 or later*

1.2.x - (Community release)
(Lassi)
first patches and feature requests from users,
additional details

*) ongoing or future release

Maintenance Plan

The software will be updated in form of bug-fixes and feature extensions. However, the time schedule of future updates is not clearly determined yet. Please be aware that we do not give any warranty about the code provided in the alpha and beta release phases.

Quality Values

Dated 11/2021.

Quality values

Value

Description

Learnability
The highest priority of sfctools is to provide an
easy-to-apply tool for scientists (not primarily developers).
Hence, easy to understand approaches, code structures
and explicit formulations are favored.

Readability
The readability of the code is a key aspect.
Splitting of statements is favored over convoluted one-liners.

Reliability
The provided tools should be reliable
and stable (if not, a beta release warning should be added).

Performance
Agent-based simulation tools are anyways slower than other modeling approaches.
Therefore, performance should only be optimized where necessary.

Coding Conventions

Dated 11/2021.

Why Python?

Python is the ’programming language of engineers’ and follows the philosophy of open source. It opens the world of programming to engineers and non-programming specialists via an easy installation and import of modules, shipping powerful toolboxes in an easy-to-read syntax. The aim of providing this framework in Python is to lower the entry barrier for economists and engineers to macroeconomic computer modeling, and, at the same time, to allow for the design of highly flexible, custom-built simulations.

The simplified language for sfctools-attune is a description language we have designed to facilitate agent-based computational economics to a broad community. For the sake of faster prototyping, as well as easier handling of the agent-based modeling aspects, we have introduced this language as part of the graphical user interface. Although the full capabilities of sfctools can also be reached using full Python code, in our view, the attune language offers a fast(er) and (more) efficient approach to SFC-ABM modeling.

Organizational Information

Core Development Team

The core development team of sfctools is listed in the table below (dated 10/2022).

Role

Responsible

Scrum Master

Benjamin Fuchs 1

Developer

Thomas Baldauf 2

Product Owner

Marlene O`Sullivan (2020-2022) 2 Patrick Jochem (2022-now) 1
1(1,2)

Department of Energy System Analysis at Institute of Networked Energy Systems, DLR

2(1,2)

Energy Economics Group, Department of Energy System Analysis at Institute of Networked Energy Systems, DLR

Open-Source Readiness

Features, dependencies and components which are contraindicative or at odds
with an open source publication should not be part of this package.