Hi there, Some time ago I decided to start contributing to the open-source project. In this series, I'll share my thoughts, stories, successes, and failures in my contribution process.
OK, I need to find some project
To be honest that wasn't an easy part for me. I wanted to join a small project without dozens of contributors and without very complex and advanced codebase because I'm not a JS expert yet. I wanted to start small. Also, I wanted to code in React I'm learning that tech right now and I want to keep mastering it.
I used the tool I built to easily find OS project/issues and start contributing https://justcontribute.netlify.app You can read more about it in my previous DEV post
It took me a while to find a good fit for me. Some of the projects weren't exciting, some of them used Svetle or Vue. But finally, I came across TidyTweets repo. There was just one developer and a bunch of good first issues. What's more, Rafael - the maintainer, is a much more experienced developer then I am so it was a great opportunity to learn new stuff.
Setting up a dev environment was... hard
I tried to set all the things up on my local machine. It wasn't as easy. I couldn't force it to work. The project contains a lot of things that need to be configured like Netlify functions or Twitter Development Account. Rafael spent with me a lot of time to get it up and going. That was the biggest obstacle I faced so far in the project.
Right now new contributors don't need to make all those steps because TidyTwitts was added to the Netlify Open Source program so the configuration is much simpler. You just need to link TidyTweets netlify account to your local app using App ID.
First issues and PR's
Before I started I've read the contributing rules in the README. Rafael shared a great article about a successful git branching model It helped me to understand how to use git more efficient and systemize my work. Also, I've watched this YT movie about using GitHub fork.
As I mentioned I started small. Took 2 easy issues with a good first issue label. My first pull request was merged a couple of days ago and the second is in a review when I write this article.
Sum up
Things are just getting started. I hope I'll take more advanced and complicated issues as time progress. I want to encourage you all to join Rafael and me and contribute to TidyTweets all the help will be appreciated!
Also If you want to find other great OS project check out JustContribute
Top comments (2)
Awesome! One of the things I could relate to is
Setting up the dev environment, that is in fact really hard sometimes.Great, I'm also starting in open source!