Hacktoberfest 2019 — My Experience of Contributing to Open Source as a First Timer
“Every contribution counts. Everyone can make a difference. Just start with yourself.” — Anonymous
It resembled some other day; I was going through posts on Instagram feed and I saw a post by Sachin Kamat telling peeps to register for the forthcoming Hacktoberfest event, it was few days to the end of September however I felt free to register for the event.
Initially, I thought it’s like Hack in October Festival however It was contributing to open source.
At first, contributing to open source can be extremely scary. Your preferred internet search engine will return a ton of results on guides and repositories to begin. But being able to collaborate with others on projects that are helping communities is such a reward on its own.
What is Hacktoberfest?
Hacktoberfest is a month-long festival of contributing to Open Source, running from 1st October to 31st October. It was started by DigitalOcean in collaboration with GitHub. During the month of October, you are encouraged to contribute and make pull requests to your favorite repositories on GitHub. On the off chance that you figure out how to make four altogether, you are qualified to get a swanky T-Shirt!
I was likewise blessed to discover Hacktoberfest, a virtual occasion where DigitalOcean and GitHub offer swag to encourage contributions in open-source software. The objective was to make 4 pull requests (anytime in October) in any GitHub-hosted repo or project. In the event that you achieve this, they’ll mail you a free shirt!
Hacktoberfest ends up being an incredible month to get into Open Source. GitHub was filled with issues labeled Hacktoberfest that needed your help. There were sufficient projects to choose from — ranging from documentation to Python to RUST. During this time, I figured out how to search GitHub for issues by labels and how to discover great issues to contribute to.
For individuals like me, who didn’t have any understanding, labels, for example, novices just, simple, or great first-issue end up being my companion. There are likewise some acceptable sites that aim to make the process of finding those issues easier. For example, up-for-grabs.net or code-triage — there’s probably many more.
Proceed to pursue a couple of these or look at their issues!
Rules to get started :
1. Register for Hacktoberfest
2. Learn how to make a pull request
3. Make 4 more pull requests
4. Check and see whether you’ve qualified
5. Wait for your Hacktoberfest Tshirt to arrive in the mail
I learned how to contribute
While trying to make my first contributions, I realized that my biggest unknown was not how to add links to markdown or style a page but how’s to make a good pull request using Git and the command line.
I found a free guide on Digital Ocean helpful and took notes of the command line commands I executed while following along.
The guidelines could be summed up to something as basic as this:
· Find a repository
· Fork the repository
· Clone the repository
· Create a branch
· Make Changes and commit them
· Push changes to GitHub
· Sync the Fork
· Create Pull Request
This truly helped me to comprehend the purpose of a pull-request and to understand the process of making a contribution. This blog post also helped me to understand that being descriptive is your best weapon — as that way you can get support and indicate if a Pull Request is still in progress. Subsequent to learning this I made more pull requests.
My pull request got accepted
I was over to the moon after getting mail that I effectively finished the challenge.
Skills and Values that I Gained:
1. Learned from reading other’s people’s source code.
2. Communicated with open source maintainers.
3. Learned the importance of good README files.
4. Expanded my network.
Winning Swag
When the Hacktoberfest T-shirt finally arrived in November having been shipped all the way from America, I felt like Christmas had come early. Holding it in my hands made me realize that I had helped to create and extend something that mattered. Wearing it always reminds me to share my knowledge and this year I will also try to contribute more code, after all, I am not a first-timer anymore!
My advice to fellow developers:
· Anybody can contribute to Open Source
· Contribution to open source can be as little as fixing a typo.
· Open source contributions make sense, as it helps to improve both our technical and soft skills.
· Through contribution to open source, one will have a better experience of how GitHub really works.
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Happy Coding & Hacking :)
