First Tasks

From OpenHatch wiki
Revision as of 09:01, 15 November 2014 by imported>Paulproteus

This page exists to provide you with good, small tasks as you get started contributing to open source projects.

Every project on this page has:

  • Clear instructions for how to contribute to their project, including setting up a development environment, contributing changes, and how to contact them.
  • At least one hand-picked task that (hopefully!) can be completed within an hour or two.
  • At least one maintainer/contributor who's really excited about welcoming you to their project.

If you don't find any tasks you'd like here, try these additional sources:

  • This page has curated tasks from previous events, but there are no maintainers for these projects at the event. That said, other mentors will probably be able to help you.
  • Search 700+ open source projects at once
  • Find a project that fits your interests using this guide.

You can see past first tasks, which have been successfully resolved, here.

This page was last curated Nov 15, 2014. Tasks on this page may have been resolved since then, so check their status in their respective issue trackers.

OpenHatch

Description: OpenHatch.org sees itself as "free software's welcoming committee." We make web tools and run events to help people join open source projects, primarily in Python and Django with some Javascript, CSS, and HTML. We're always looking for enthusiastic new people willing to file bugs, submit patches, ask questions, write documentation, and review code. To help you imagine the site, the volunteer opportunity finder helps people find "easy" bugs to work on in projects all over the web, and supporting code to download that data through API use and scraping; the profile tool helps people write about their experience contributing to open source; and the training missions are interactive, plot-based teaching tools to help people learn skills required in open source in a friendly setting.

Resources:

Tasks:

Each of these is a bug that you should fix on your computer, and when you are satisfied with the fix, create a pull request for. These are supposed to be sorted from easiest to hardest, though your mileage may vary.

  • Update some documentation to indicate that it has broken links <https://github.com/openhatch/oh-mainline/issues/1427>
    • Why it matters: The OpenHatch project's documentation is out of date, which means that newcomers will be misled!
    • Skills you will learn and/or apply: Editing Python documentation using Sphinx & rST, which are common on the open source Python world.
  • Remove some Python code that we don't use anymore <https://github.com/openhatch/oh-mainline/issues/1476>
    • Why it matters: The more code a project has, the harder it is to maintain.
    • Skills you will learn and/or apply: Editing Python code; running tests, or at least being aware of them.
  • Add a navigation link within a part of the site, so users don't get lost: https://github.com/openhatch/oh-mainline/issues/1385
    • Why it matters: This part of the web app is easy for people to get lost in.
    • Skills you will learn and/or apply: Django templates, general understanding of how web apps work.
    • Other links: https://hashman.ca/gsoc/ is the blog posts by the author of this part of the site, which is the best documentation available for it.

Harder tasks:

  • https://openhatch.org/bugs/issue898 -- Sign up for an account on AppVeyor and configure their site to automatically periodically test if oh-mainline runs properly on Windows.
    • Skills you will learn and/or apply: Automation (like scripting), using Windows.
  • http://openhatch.org/bugs/issue71 -- add support to the site for Gravatars. Very open ended at the moment. I would prefer to leave the task of actually downloading the Gravatar to be done in the user's web browser, but that might seem kind of like an odd implementation strategy.
    • Skills you will learn and/or apply: Reading documentation for third-party services; general understanding of HTML; editing Django templates.
  • https://github.com/openhatch/oh-mainline/issues/1367 -- Right now, when you interact with some parts of the OpenHatch site, it incorrectly triggers a notification on the front of the site.
    • Why it matters: The site mistakenly tells people some content is newer than it is.
    • Skills you will learn and/or apply: Django and Python, aka "backend web programming".

Open Source Comes to Campus website

Shauna added (integrated these when the above are checked):


  • Reproduce documentation issue A student reported an issue with the documentation for XChat. We've now switched to HexChat. Does the documentation still need to be fixed?

Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla, the non-profit makers of Firefox, creates products designed to help people take control and explore the full potential of their lives online.

Good first tasks:

  • Triage bugs in Firefox for Android: Improve the quality of bugs reported for Firefox on Android
    • Why this matters: Bugzilla is Mozilla's bug tracking system. This is where bugs are reported and where every change for a bug is stored and tracked. Bugs can stay unnoticed in Bugzilla for a long period of time. They are either not moved to the right component or are missing vital information to get them in developers’ hands. Help us reduce the number of UNCOnfirmed bugs in the Bugzilla database, and to improve the quality of the bugs reported.
    • https://oneanddone.mozilla.org/en-US/tasks/20/
  • Test the new Flash player for Firefox, called Shumway, by watching Flash videos and looking for differences.
    • Why this matters: Many websites use videos and ads created to run in Adobe Flash, a plugin that Firefox can't distribute. Shumway is Mozilla's implementation of Flash in HTML and Javascript. Once Shumway works reliably, Mozilla will be able to make Shumway the default Flash player for all Firefox users.
    • https://oneanddone.mozilla.org/en-US/tasks/24/

WelcomeBot (xx)

Description: WelcomeBot is an IRC bot designed to welcome people into the #openhatch IRC channel (although it can be easily adapted for use in other channels). It is written in python, and features the socket module.

Resources:

  • Source
  • Overview and installation/contributing guides: can be found in the repository's readme.
  • Main contact: Shauna (shauna on Freenode; shaunagm at gmail dot com)
  • Updates/problems/ideas: Please use the issue tracker! (As well as asking shauna about them on IRC.)

Tasks:

  • Add rules to catch unidentified nicks - When users who have registered their nicknames join IRC without identifying, different IRC clients will change their nickname in different ways. The bot currently only accounts for one of those ways, which means people are greeted unnecessarily.
  • Bot does not recognize fast name change - When users join the channel and change their name, the bot uses their original name to greet them. A fix for this would likely involve:

Harder tasks that may still be fun:

  • Bot goes offline silently - Every couple of weeks, the bot experiences a bug and turns off silently. Investigate tools like cronjob, monit, nagios, etc so that we can get a notification if it goes offline.
  • Make test suite - If you like testing, this is the task for you! A good first step would be to read through the script and identify what needs to be tested. Alternatively, if you could read through some of the resources listed in the issue and report back what you've learned about doing tests in python, that would be super helpful too. This project's maintainer has never developed tests before from scratch, so we are all in it together. :)
  • bug causing bot to go offline - This may be a tricky bug to fix, since it's not clear what input is causing the crash and it may be difficult to reproduce (the bot currently crashes on this bug approximately every two weeks). But you may be able to figure out what's going on from the information given!

OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap is collaboratively building a free map of the world, editable by anyone. Imagine the collaborative editing of Wikipedia, but making a map like Google Maps instead of an encyclopedia. The project has many components and tools using many languages and technologies, both backend and frontend - if you like Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, Java, Javascript, C++, C, Python, or other languages, you can find components to contribute to.

Resources:

Suggested tasks:

TEMPLATE: NAME

Description: Please describe your project here. Make sure to mention the overall goal of your project as well as mentioning the main technologies it uses. People using this page may be doing searches for keywords such as topics, types of software, or language names, so make sure they can find your project!

Resources:

  • Project Overview
  • Setting up the development environment
  • Contributing changes
  • Contact info

Tasks:

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