Anonymous user
Open Source Comes to Campus/Curriculum/Finding a Project: Difference between revisions
Open Source Comes to Campus/Curriculum/Finding a Project (view source)
Revision as of 20:47, 13 September 2014
, 9 years ago→Going Forward
imported>Brittag (tried to clarify note-taking instructions) |
imported>Paulproteus |
||
(4 intermediate revisions by 3 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
So you want to contribute to an open source project. With tens of thousands of options to choose from, how do you find one that's right for you? This activity is meant to help you narrow down your options to a few different projects you can pursue.
Line 20:
* Curated lists (more useful):
** [https://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/org/list/public/google/gsoc2014 Google Summer of Code mentoring projects]
Line 32 ⟶ 31:
== Step 2: Researching Projects ==
Once you've got at least
* website url
Line 41 ⟶ 40:
* installation guide
Write this information down as well.
Some advice: The simplest way to find the project's main website is to google it. A well maintained project will have links from the website to their source code repository, issue tracker, mailing lists and IRC channel. Sometimes this information will all be bundled together in a “developer guide”. Larger projects may have multiple mailing lists for different people (developers, users, translators, etc) and for different parts of the project. Some code hosting services, such as Github, provide issue trackers as well. You can usually find a link to the issue tracker in the code repository and vice versa. Popular services include Github, Google Code, Bitbucket, SourceForge and Gitorious. Popular issue tracker services include Bugzilla, Github, and Google Code.
Line 60 ⟶ 59:
Every project is made up of individuals, and this means that each project has a different atmosphere or culture. You can read through their mailing list archives, or lurk on their IRC channel (or read their channel logs, if available) to see how newcomers are treated. When people have questions, are they answered patiently or ignored? Are the community members friendly with each other, and talk about things other than the project? If that's a dynamic you like, you can search for it. One thing to look for are codes of conduct. A lot of smaller projects don't think to have them, but many larger projects do, and you can get a sense of the kind of community a project has by seeing what kind of behavior they tolerate and what they discourage.
=== Is the project the right size for me? ===
Projects vary greatly in the size of the community and in the size of the project itself. Ask yourself what size project you are looking for. Each has its advantages. For instance, a larger project will likely have more and better documentation, while a smaller project will have fewer elements to learn about. A larger project may have more people who can help you, but it may be easier to get lost in the crowd.
== Step 4: Contacting Projects ==
Line 92 ⟶ 95:
That's it! You're done with the activity.
A quick note: you might wonder why we asked you to find
One more thing: we'd love to see your worksheet for this activity! We want to see how people are using it so we can improve it. You can send it to us (anonymously or not) at hello@openhatch.org.
|