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+# Contributing
+
+Contributions to Scour are welcome, feel free to create a pull request!
+
+In order to be able to merge your PR as fast as possible please try to stick to the following guidelines.
+
+> _**TL;DR** (if you now what you're doing) –  Always run [`make check`](https://github.com/scour-project/scour/blob/master/Makefile) before creating a PR to check for common problems._
+
+
+## Code Style
+
+The Scour project tries to follow the coding conventions described in [PEP 8 - The Style Guide for Python Code](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/). While there are some inconsistencies in existing code (e.g. with respect to naming conventions and the usage of globals), new code should always abide by the standard.
+
+To quickly check for common mistakes you can use [`flake8`](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/flake8). Our [Makefile](https://github.com/scour-project/scour/blob/master/Makefile) has a convenience target with the correct options:
+```Makefile
+make flake8
+```
+
+## Unit Tests
+
+In order to check functionality of Scour and prevent any regressions in existing code a number of tests exist which use the [`unittest`](https://docs.python.org/library/unittest.html) unit testing framework which ships with Python. You can quickly run the tests by using the [Makefile](https://github.com/scour-project/scour/blob/master/Makefile) convenience target:
+```Makefile
+make test
+```
+
+These tests are run automatically on all PRs using [TravisCI](https://travis-ci.org/scour-project/scour) and have to pass at all times! When you add new functionality you should always include suitable tests with your PR (see [`testscour.py`](https://github.com/scour-project/scour/blob/master/testscour.py)).
+
+### Coverage
+
+To ensure that all possible code conditions are covered by a test you can use [`coverage`](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/coverage). The [Makefile](https://github.com/scour-project/scour/blob/master/Makefile) convenience target automatically creates an HTML report in `htmlcov/index.html`:
+```Makefile
+make coverage
+```
+
+These reports are also created automatically by our TravisCI builds and are accessible via [Codecov](https://codecov.io/gh/scour-project/scour)
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