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General Discussion

Pranjal Agnihotri
Pranjal Agnihotri
4,187 Points

Contribution to Open Source?

Hii everyone , I have a few questions related to Open source contribution and this is for absolute beginners

1) If I have not made any major project can I contribute to open source (Most people say it is not easy to contribute to open source if you don't have a deep knowledge about the programming language)

2) How to find the right project to contribute on.

3) Where to find the projects where I can contribute on.

4) How to contribute without breaking the pre written code.

3 Answers

Jonathan Grieve
MOD
Jonathan Grieve
Treehouse Moderator 91,253 Points

Hi Pranjal,

Open source is open to everyone, so if you feel comfortable with doing that I'm sure the tech community is always open and friendly to new people contributing to their work.

You can find projects all over Github that offer changes by doing what are called pull requests. You might clone the project on to your system, make the changes you think might help the project in a separate branch and then offer it as a pull request. If you use a git branch, you shouldn't be able to, or be allowed to propose anything that breaks a pre written project.

Good luck! :-)

Pranjal Agnihotri
Pranjal Agnihotri
4,187 Points

Thank you Jonathan very much. How to clone and fork a project is there any treehouse course on that.

Ari Misha
Ari Misha
19,323 Points

Hiya there! Open Source is not just about contributing to code base. Some people contribute with documentations or emailing lists or marketing or even Meetups. But you can contribute to their code base as well. And yes its true you might need to have more deeper knowledge about the language. But that shouldnt stop you from contributing to open source projects. All it needs a first step.

Now the most important question is how to find projects as a beginner? If you're a beginner , you must have used third party plugins and libraries that you really liked and solved most of your headaches, why not go with projects that interests you the most? But dont jump right in coz time is money. There are other factors that you need to keep in mind:

  • the last commit
  • pull requests
  • issues
  • look at the conversations and find out how friendly maintainers are?
  • stars
  • documentation

Dont be rushed! Put the project on watch mode and watch every conversation and pull requests. Choose like 5 or 6 different projects that you really interests you and you feel like you can really improve this project, and choose one of 'em 5 projects that seems really trendy and has really thorough documentation to help you out. I hope it helped!

~ Ari

Pranjal Agnihotri
Pranjal Agnihotri
4,187 Points

Thank you again Ari very much. Can I get your email id if you don't mind.

Craig Dennis
STAFF
Craig Dennis
Treehouse Teacher

This post was featured on the Treehouse Show! Thanks for another thoughtful question Pranjal Agnihotri , and thanks for the wonderful answers Jonathan Grieve and Ari Misha