Contributing to Open Source on GitHub

https://guides.github.com/overviews/os-contributing/

by pytrin • 12 years ago

117 32 12 years ago

guides.github.com

orta• 12 years ago

This is a lovely overview. Good work githubbers.

lawl• 12 years ago

I think it's interesting how GitHub is trying to push open source contribution. However, we shouldn't rely too much on GitHub for (open source) collaboration. Git is decentral after all. Open source should remain too.

akerl_• 12 years ago

Properly used, GitHub doesn't stop git from being decentralized.

danso2• 12 years ago

A surprising number of developers don't really understand that...which is partially a problem of how complex things generally are in development, and partially a result of how good Github has become.

Case in point: During the whole Julie Horvath controversy, a few anti-Github developers started a campaign to create awareness of the harmful effects of Github's culture (or something)...but they created their standalone site using Github Pages:

https://github.com/CultureOffset/cultureoffset.github.com

I pointed out, independent of how I felt about Horvath or Github, that not only does it send a terrible message to run a boycotting campaign on the service you want to boycott...it is completely unnecessary, thanks to how git actually works and the many other great build tools/stacks to do static web development in under 24 hours. However, I got reamed for being an asshole and "man-splaining" things.

But really, as useful as Github is, every dev should spend some time on thinking through what underlies Github, and how to get by without it...especially if you intend on protesting Github.

prezjordan• 12 years ago

The whole "Wiki" feature comes to mind. Can I leave and take my project's wiki with me?

shurcooL• 12 years ago

What should I do if the open source project I want to contribute to isn't on GitHub?

yesiamyourdad• 12 years ago

Most of the advice about reading the docs is relevant. GitHub didn't invent those conventions, the whole README/CONTRIBUTING/LICENSE thing has been around for a long time. I remember being so impressed with Perl back in the mid 90's because it was so freakin simple to install, get up and running, and get help when you needed it.

After that, you should email the lead dev(s) and ask how you can contribute. Many projects have a mailing list and that's usually the best place to start.

teacup50• 12 years ago

Copy the project's code into a GitHub repository that uses the project's name and start hacking on it there, and then release your own fork.

Oh, wait, that's exactly what you shouldn't do. :)

recursive• 12 years ago

Why not? That's what I would have guessed.

eik3_de• 12 years ago

great.

next up: a well-written & concise guide on writing proper commit messages. could be based on http://tbaggery.com/2008/04/19/a-note-about-git-commit-messa... and http://robots.thoughtbot.com/5-useful-tips-for-a-better-comm...

MarkTee• 12 years ago

Tim's post (the first link) is great; I've been meaning to start using git hooks to enforce the standards that he's set out in it.

A sample script can be found here:

http://addamhardy.com/blog/2013/06/05/good-commit-messages-a...

pyrohawk• 12 years ago

Open source tacos. I would love to debug those.

olalonde2• 12 years ago

Tip: if you are not sure who the committers to a project are: https://api.github.com/repos/:user/:repo/collaborators. For example: https://api.github.com/repos/bitcoin/bitcoin/collaborators

This can be useful when people are commenting on your pull request and you are not sure whether they have a final decision on the merge.

MaxGabriel• 12 years ago

I think that Github now labels them as "collaborators" in the UI.

In this PR for example, wearhere is labelled as a collaborator in the corner of his comment. https://github.com/inkling/Subliminal/pull/170

olalonde2• 12 years ago

Oh, I didn't notice. I suppose having the full list of collaborators could still be useful in some cases.

malandrew2• 12 years ago

Another great tool with respect to knowing more about collaborators is git-summary in TJ Holowaychuk's git-extras

https://github.com/visionmedia/git-extras#git-summary

wise_young_man• 12 years ago

I wrote a similar, but maybe less detailed post about getting started in open source on my blog. http://derekmyers.com/posts/getting-started-open-source/

jarofgreen• 12 years ago

GitHub can be a little to good at pushing this. I've been taken to task for not having docs for my Open Source project which is on GitHub.

"But I do, they are on this website here and there is a link to them at the very top of the README!"

Didn't matter, I got told off for what was really "you don't have docs in the usual place on GitHub."

Very frustrating.

@patio11 I think it was made a comment in a blog about don't put Open Source on GitHub because you really build up GitHub's name not your own, which is an interesting point to discuss. EDIT: found it https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/do-not-en...

"This is one reason why, while I love OSS, I would suggest people not immediately throw their OSS on Github. That makes it very easy for developers to consume your code, but it does not make it easy for you to show the impact of that code to other people, particularly to non-technical stakeholders. To the extent that people's lives are meaningfully improved by your code, the credit (and observable citations) often goes to Github rather than going to you. If you're going to spend weeks or months of time writing meaningful OSS libraries, make a stand-alone web presence for them."

(For my project I'm using GitHub Git, Github issues, but everything else is on a website on a domain I control.)

niels_olson• 12 years ago

So the real issue, it seems to me, is GitHub should be making it very clear, somehow, to users how to cite their sources? Most journals have a "suggested citation" blurb in every article's webpage.

Does git have built-in citation management?

That would be awesome, btw. That would arguably elevate git to the level of email: made by hackers for hackers, now universal to the fabric of modern life.

davidw• 12 years ago

They make no mention of mailing lists or forums, which most sufficiently large open source projects have. It's often a good idea to sign up and get a feel for how things are done in a given commmunity, and for large changes, suggest them on the mailing list for discussion before opening a bug report or writing code.

dreamdu5t• 12 years ago

Are there people out there that don't understand that software uses readmes and licenses, yet also are able to contribute code? I mean, people can program but not know how to contribute?

I find this hard to imagine.

sophacles3• 12 years ago

Yes.

There are people who are just learning to code, who got the advice, find a simple open source project and help.

There are people who have only done early stage classes for CS degrees that want to practice in real coding but haven't been exposed to real world development.

There are people who have been coding forever but never paid attention to that stuff because they were always part of a team and didn't worry about it.

One extreme example: we had a person wander into the local hacker space on python user's group night. She had an English degree and had never done anything nearly as technical as coding. She knew that her library science degree would entail some coding and database knowledge and wanted to get up to speed prior to needing it for coursework. She understood the concept of community work and abstract stuff about open source, but not really anything on a practical level. Within the day she was helping one of the member's pet project by copy editing the readme and some of the tech docs. I'm certain she had no idea what a readme was when she got up that morning. (not exactly a code contribution, but definitely a project contribution). Within a couple of months she was able to get her first code submission to a project.

Ignorance and ability are not as correlated as people like to think they are.

joshlegs• 12 years ago

Ignorance and ability are not as correlated as people like to think they are.

thank god there are people who understand that. It's amazing to me the number of people who equate the two. Equally ridiculous is the tendency of programmers to spew advice such as "Read the fucking wiki (or documentation)". That really doesnt help newbs who are just barely figuring out the right way to Google things. The thing about being able to find some instructions on how to do X is that it's predicated on actually knowing that instructions are out there somewhere.

Contributing to Open Source on GitHub

Related Stories