Sam

Posted on Jul 9, 2022 • Updated on Jul 14, 2022 • Originally published at blog.dotenx.com

Open-Source contribution, a beginner's guide (in 2 minutes).

#opensource #beginners #programming #github

Open-source is not a new concept but in recent years specially it has gained more attention from both developers and the companies in tech industry.

Successful businesses such as Gitlab, Terraform and Sentry are some of the examples of billion dollar startup unicorns which all are offering a service which is open-source at its heart.

Not only these companies have hired the main contributors in their open-source projects, but also other companies are keen to hire developers who have proved their skills and experience working on an open-source project.

In this post I give you a practical guide with the useful commands and scenarios you need to be aware of to be able to start contributing to open-source.

First of all each open-source project is stored on one or more Git repositories, meaning you need to know some basics of Git and the platform.

Repository used in the examples:
https://github.com/dotenx/dotenx

Github

The most popular platform used by absolute majority of open-source projects is Github.
So let's start with the very first things you should know about an open-source repository on Github by an example.

In this picture I've added some details about some particularly important parts of the Github panel on the landing page of a repository (dotenx).

On this page we have the links to the Issues and Pull Requests pages.

Issues

In this page you can see all the "Issues" of the repository.

The open issues are either reported by someone or created by the contributors to address a bug, a missing part in a feature, problem in the documentation, etc.

This is where you can search particularly for the open areas to contribute to the project. You can usually search for the issues with labels like these:

good-first-issue
easy
beginner

Pull Requests

Changing the source code in open-source repositories happen through PRs. A Pull Request in simple terms means "These are my changes, pull them and merge them into the repository if OK".

In order to create a PR you have to follow these steps:

Identify an issue you want to work on
Fork the repository
Clone the forked repository: git clone <repo url>
Create a branch: git checkout -b <your branch name>
Implement your changes
Commit the changes: git commit -m <commit message>
Push the changes: git push
Create a PR on the original repository
Respond to the reviews and commit+push new changes if required

Finally, open-source is all about supporting each other. Appreciate it if you support my work by adding a star to my project:
https://github.com/dotenx/dotenx

If you're interested to see more beginner friendly, easily digestible, git and open-source articles please let me know in the comments or like this post.

Oldest comments (6)

Wj • Jul 9 '22

Of you are a beginner, bookmark this for a handy guide! ✅

Tina Huynh • Jul 9 '22

Love this!! Very helpful

ZigRazor • Jul 12 '22

I share with you my Open Source Projects that I'm working on:

ZigRazor / CXXGraph

Header-Only C++ Library for Graph Representation and Algorithms

CXXGraph

Share on

Introduction

CXXGraph is a small library, header only, that manages the Graph and it's algorithms in C++. In other words a "Comprehensive C++ Graph Library" An alternative to Boost Graph Library (BGL).

We are Looking for...

We are looking for:

Site Developer for the development of the CXXGraph site ( for the moment on GitHub Page );
Developers and Committers, also at first experience, we will guide you step by step to the open-source world!

If you are interested, please contact us at zigrazor@gmail.com or contribute to this project. We are waiting for you!

Roadmap

Completed	Description	Date of Completition
✔️	First Optimization	Apr 4, 2022
✔️	Add Benchmark for all algorithms	Oct 5, 2022
✔️	Code Optimization	Oct 5, 2022
✔️	Release 0.4.0	Oct 7, 2022
✔️	"Const" Code Review #155	Mar 23, 2023
✔️	Release 0.5.0	Mar 23, 2023
❕	Test

…

View on GitHub

ZigRazor / CXXMicroService

A C++ Library that give microservice framework ( Server / Client ) upon 0mq framework

CXXMicroService

A C++ Library that give microservice framework ( Server / Client )

Introduction

CXXMicroService is a C++ library, that manages MicroServices, upon different Framework ( actually only 0mq is implemented).

We are Looking for...

We are looking for:

Site Developer for the development of the CXXMicroService site ( for the moment on GitHub Page );
Developers and Committers, also at first experience, we will guide you step by step to the open-source world!

If you are interested, please contact us at zigrazor@gmail.com or contribute to this project. We are waiting for you!

Roadmap

Completed	Description	Date of Completition
✔️	First Commit	May 2, 2022
✔️	Introduce the basic Framework	May 24, 2022
📝	Introduction of more complete Examples	TBD
📝	Introduction of Orchestrator	TBD
📝	Introduction of Unit Test Framework	TBD
✔️	Introduction of basic CI/CD	Jun 6, 2022
📝	Advanced CI/CD	TBD
📝	First Beta Release

…

View on GitHub

ZigRazor / MTL

Multi Thread Library

MTL (Multi Threading Library)

Multi Threading Library is a set of utilities, easy and ready to use for common task in multi threading environment and development.

Roadmap

Thread Class
Thread Manager
Thread Pool
Task Class
Ordered Task
Task Flow
Complete Documentation
Doxygen Integration
First Beta Release
Test Framework
CI/CD Pipeline
First Stable Release
Thread Monitoring
...

See the open issues for a full list of proposed features (and known issues).

Getting Started

This is an example of how you may give instructions on setting up your project locally To get a local copy up and running follow these simple example steps.

Prerequisites

The following are required to get the project up and running.

Google Test

GoogleTest

git clone https://github.com/google/googletest.git  # Dowload the Google Test repository
cd googletest                                       # Main directory of the cloned repository.
mkdir -p build                                      # Create a directory to hold the build output.
cd build                                            # Move

…

View on GitHub

ZigRazor / PyStateMachine

Python State Machine

PyStateMachine

Python State Machine

Introduction

PyStateMachine is a Framework that support state machines in Python

Requirements

Python3

How to Run

How do we import the framework?

Insure that Python3 is installed:
- python.org/downloads/
Install the PyStateMachines framework
- pip3 install PyStateMachines

Example

After framework is installed, import and create a small example Create xml file from sample with the State machine states.

myStateMachine.xml

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<x:States xmlns:x="pystatemachine:sm">
    <State>
        <Name>State1</Name>
        <Event>
            <Name>ToState2</Name>
            <ToState>State2</ToState>
        </Event>
    </State>
    <State>
        <Name>State2</Name>
        <Event>
            <Name>ToState3</Name>
            <ToState>State3</ToState>
        </Event>
    </State>
    <State>
        <Name>State3</Name>
        <Event>
            <Name>ToState1</Name>
            <ToState>State1</ToState>
        </Event>
    </State>
    <Initial_State>State1</Initial_State>
</x:States>

Create Python Script to run state machine pyStateMachine.py

# importing necessary packages
from StateMachine import StateMachine

"""Test StateMachine"""
sm = StateMachine("myStateMachine.xml")
sm.LoadStateMachine()

# print initial state
print(sm.get_current_state())  # current_state == State1

sm.InjectEvent("ToState2")
print(sm.get_current_state())  # current_state == State2

sm.InjectEvent("ToState3")
print(sm.get_current_state())  # current_state == State3

sm.InjectEvent("ToState1")
print(sm.get_current_state())  # current_state == State1

run Python script to execute state machine

python pyStateMachine.py

pyStateMachineUnitTest.py

## Test Suite

…

View on GitHub

If you are a beginner of Open-Source Software I can give you full support to start in the best way!

See you soon

Ahmad Mash'aal • Jul 15 '22

Think I am a beginner. I'd like to know how and where to start. :)

Sam • Jul 15 '22

We all have to start from somewhere and always there is something new to learn.

Stay tuned for the next parts. I'll keep the short like this to make it easier to follow along.

ZigRazor • Jul 15 '22

What language you want to use/learn on your path?
I can give you help to start.

DEV Community

Open-Source contribution, a beginner's guide (in 2 minutes).

Github

Issues

Pull Requests

Oldest comments (6)

ZigRazor / CXXGraph

Header-Only C++ Library for Graph Representation and Algorithms

CXXGraph

Introduction

We are Looking for...

Roadmap

ZigRazor / CXXMicroService

A C++ Library that give microservice framework ( Server / Client ) upon 0mq framework

CXXMicroService

Introduction

We are Looking for...

Roadmap

ZigRazor / MTL

Multi Thread Library

MTL (Multi Threading Library)

Roadmap

Getting Started

Prerequisites

Google Test

ZigRazor / PyStateMachine

Python State Machine

PyStateMachine

Introduction

Requirements

How to Run

Example

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