Getting Help

Even if the best docs won’t always answer your questions. If you can’t figure out how to do what you want, there are a few places you can ask, depending on the nature of your question.

  • Usage questions: “How do I do X with OPS?”, “Is there a way to do Y?” “Why does this give an error?” Please ask at https://mattermodeling.stackexchange.com, using the openpathsampling tag.

  • Bug reports: “I got this error, and I’m sure it’s a bug.” Please post it, with a minimal reproducible example, in our GitHub Issues.

  • Feature requests and implementation advice: “I’d like this feature” or “I’m trying to add this feature, what’s the best way?” These are also suitable for GitHub Issues. Implementation advice is also one of the few cases where emailing the lead developer is a good idea.

There are two main motivations in asking you to follow these rules:

  1. By posting in public, the answers to your questions are available to others. If you had a question, someone else might have the same question as well!

  2. By posting in public, you can engage the broader community’s help. If you aren’t sure whether the problem you’re having is with OPS or with Python, post it at https://mattermodeling.stackexchange.com and use both those tags – you might get an answer from a Python expert there before the OPS team even has a chance to see your post!