update contribution guide

[andersy005]

while planning a one-pager on Code Contribution norms, i learned that we've always had a skeleton contribution guide for both data science and front-end projects as part of our docs site/repo. however, the content isn't easy to find on docs.carbonplan.org unless you already know how to navigate the site. instead of duplicating efforts by creating yet another document, i decided to revamp the existing documentation. i'd definitely love feedback from folks on both the content and structure.

The latest deployment resides here: https://docs-git-update-contributor-guide-carbonplan.vercel.app/tech

cc @katamartin / @tracyanderson / @norlandrhagen / @orianac

[norlandrhagen]

tk

[norlandrhagen]

Thanks for the updates @andersy005!

[katamartin]

Thanks for updating this! I left a small suggestion to improve the link style on the landing page.

Also some high-level reactions:

• Is "data science" still the title we want to use to describe this bucket of work? At least internally, we don't seem to use this term much anymore.
• Can we delete the front-end contents? They were never fleshed out and I'd rather just omit them at this point.

[andersy005]

Can we delete the front-end contents? They were never fleshed out and I'd rather just omit them at this point.

Done!

Is "data science" still the title we want to use to describe this bucket of work? At least internally, we don't seem to use this term much anymore.

good point. now that we removed the front-end contents, i think it's best to also remove this distinction/hierarchy

[andersy005]

@norlandrhagen, i'm curious to hear your thoughts on this section

[norlandrhagen]

@andersy005 I think this is a great update! I've spent a bit of time playing with both uv and pixi this last week. In a really brief exploratory period, I think uv is easier to get setup and use, but still has the conda-forge source limitation. What do you think of having some sort of choice flow diagram like:

  graph TD;
      A[I have a conda-forge specific dep like xESMF, GDAL etc.]-->|yes| B;
      A[I have a conda-forge specific dep like xESMF, GDAL etc.]-->|no| E[Use UV];
      B[I want to stick in the conda/mamba ecosystem]-->|yes| C[Use mamba/conda-store];
      B-->|no| D[Use Pixi];

Loading

[katamartin]

Left one small content suggestion, otherwise this is looking good to me.

Before linking these MDX pages from the landing page, I think we need to address a hydration error (also on main) that affects the styling of all the MDX pages on initial load (see screenshot below). Doesn't need to be a blocker for getting further feedback on the content, but something to track down (@Shane98c or I can also help with this!).