add basic contributing guidelines #vc

Author: pimentel

CONTRIBUTING.md

@@ -0,0 +1,27 @@
+# contributing to `sleuth`
+
+Firstly -- thank you for being interested in helping us!
+What follows is a short document on how to contribute to `sleuth`.
+
+## development cycle
+
+The basic development cycle look something like this:
+
+1. Make some modifications
+2. Make sure all of the tests work: `devtools::test()`
+3. Under most circumstances you should write your own tests
+
+## style
+
+Style is checked using [lintr](https://github.com/jimhester/lintr).
+The linters that are set can be found in the configuration file `.lintr`.
+Style can be checked for the entire project using `lintr::lint_package()`.
+
+**All proposed code must pass the lint tests** otherwise it will not be accepted into the main branch.
+
+## types of pull requests
+
+Please note that this project is still in alpha stages and the statistics are constantly being developed while the paper is being written.
+Because of this, we are currently not accepting changes to the statistics.
+If you are interested in adding features, please check with us first by opening a Github issue.
+Thanks!