Contributing to Open Source for beginners
I'm a Software Developer from Lagos, Nigeria. I write about the things I learn and work with
I recently made my first contribution to open source and I will love to share my experience. Firstly, Open source isn’t as difficult as it seems, if you are a beginner I know you might not understand a lot about Open source so I will start with what open source is about.
What is Open source?
According to Wikipedia, Open-source software is a type of computer software in which source code is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to study, change, and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose. Open-source software may be developed in a collaborative public manner.
In less grammar, Open source is simply software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. As a beginner, I used to think only experts could contribute, and I might not be able to contribute as I do not have enough skills. But this mindset isn’t true as one doesn’t necessarily need to write code to contribute.
What can I contribute to Open Source?
Documentation
You can contribute to open source by helping to update, write, or maintain the project’s documentation. if you have some design skills, you could help improve the design of the project and the project’s interface. Documentation also includes translations i.e helping to interpret or update documentations in your language, answering questions, and guiding newbies on the organization’s page.
Use the software.
Being a user of the software is one of the easiest ways you can contribute to open source. By using an open-source software, you get to advocate for the software. You can google the open source alternative of software you plan to use.
Providing solutions
Sometimes open source projects have issues (this is usually in the issue section on their Github page) you could contribute by first identifying an issue if none is available on their page, then try to help fix the problem.
Educate
By telling people about open source and your experience no matter how small you think it is, you are contributing to open source as more people are going to get to know about how it works from you. Writing a blog post, recording a podcast, introducing your friends to open source projects, recording a youtube video are best practices in educating more people about open source.
How to contribute to Open Source
Requirement
Getting Started
I will be using the NYTimes covid’19 repository in this article.
Go through the ReadMe.
A ReadMe is the first file one should read when contributing to a project. It contains sets of useful information about a project, and also serves as the project manual. Carefully read through the README to understand what the repository is about.
Scroll to the issues section
Issues are used to track bugs, tasks, and report new ideas on Github, scroll to the issues section, and check the issue you will like to contribute to.
Fork the repository
This will create a copy of the repository in your own account.
Clone the repository
Go to your forked repository and click copy to clipboard icon. Open gitbash or terminal and run the following command
- git clone ‘the copied url’ in my case the command is git clone https://github.com/motunrayokoyejo/covid-19-data
Create a branch
A branch in Github allows each contributor to isolate their work from others, it also makes it easy for git to merge versions later. Change to the repository directory on your computer and create a branch
- cd covid-19-data
- git checkout -b (branch name)
Problem solving
Make necessary changes to code and fix the issues, then add and commit your changes using the command below.
- git add .
- git commit -m ‘ your commit message’
Push changes to Github
Push your work to Github using the command git push origin (branch name) then go to your forked repository and make a pull request.
Yaaaay!!! You made your first contributions.
