Introduction to Open-source

What is open-source?

Open-source projects are projects where the code is freely available, to which you can access and contribute to them via a code hosting platform (like GitHub).

How does open-source work?

Open-source projects can be maintained by a single person or a team. We will call these people maintainers. Maintainers are the people who oversee the whole project, handle product development, and communicate with contributors (like you!).

As contributors, you can tackle project issues (which can be bugs, features, documentation, design, etc.), or create issues to improve the project!

Open-source is a great step to be involved in a large project, where you can learn new technologies, sharpen your coding skills, or expand your network!

How to Contribute to an Open Source Repository

Rules of Thumb: Always try to use search engines for solutions first. If that does not help you solve your problems, then reach out to the moderators/maintainers of the project with what you tried, and they will definitely help you out!

Step 1: Choose a project

Choosing the right project to start and contribute to is important, as it will shape your experience and opportunities. There are some criteria that you may need to consider:

There are many sources of information that you can look up for: the project website, documentation, past issues, discussion, etc. Also, feel free to reach out to the moderators or maintainers of the project if you are interested to learn more - they are more than welcome to answer your questions.

Step 2: Set up a local environment for the project with Git & GitHub

After choosing a project to contribute, you need to be able to run the project locally and familiarize yourself with the codebase. Here are some basic steps to set up a local project (remember that this may vary in different projects, so make sure to read the project’s specific README/documentation thoroughly):

Prerequisties: You already have a GitHub account and installed Git. If not, please sign up to GitHub and install Git.

  1. Open your Command Line (cmd) or PowerShell, and navigate to the folder that you want to store your project on your computer (e.g: D:\\Projects>). Then, we will clone the project (i.e. creating a copy of the project on your computer)

    Get the link from your project. Note that you can clone via HTTPS or SSH, it’s up to you.

    Get the link from your project. Note that you can clone via HTTPS or SSH, it’s up to you.

    D:\\Projects>git clone <project-github-link>
    

    Quick Note: Cloning via HTTPS is easier to set up, while SSH is more preferred because it’s more secure. If this is the first time you are using Git, you may want to clone with HTTPS. If you decide to do so, then you may be prompted to enter your credentials. Before you can enter them successfully, you’ll need to set up your identity (which should be the same as your Github account) through config

    git config --global user.name "John Doe"
    git config --global user.email [email protected]
    

    Next, you need to set up a Personal Access Token (PAT) to let Git verify that it’s actually you when you sign in. Don’t worry, setting one up isn’t hard. Follow this article to generate a PAT for yourself.