adds a utils section to contributing.md
- [The contribution process](#the-contribution-process)
* [Submitting pull requests](#submitting-pull-requests)
* [Coding style](#coding-style)
+ * [Utility functions](#utility-functions)
- [Unit testing](#unit-testing)
- [The code reviewing process (for the maintainers)](#the-code-reviewing-process)
+- [Admin tasks](#admin-tasks)
## Introduction
@@ -59,6 +61,16 @@ License information: all source code files should start with this paragraph:
```
+### Utility functions
+MONAI provides a set of generic utility functions and frequently used routines.
+These are located in [``monai/utils``](./monai/utils/) and in the module folders such as [``networks/utils.py``](./monai/networks/).
+Users are encouraged to use these common routines to improve code readability and reduce the code maintenance burdens.
+
+Notably,
+- ``monai.module.export`` decorator can make the module name shorter when importing,
+for example, ``import monai.transforms.Spacing`` is the equivalent of ``monai.transforms.transforms.Spacing`` if
+``class Spacing`` defined in file `monai/transforms/transforms.py` is decorated with ``@export("monai.transforms")``.
+
### Building the documentation
To build documentation via Sphinx in`docs/` folder:
```bash
