Open Source Comes to Campus/For staff

To fork a project on Github

• Start out logged in to Github

• Visit the project you want to fork

• Click the "Fork" button in the top-right

• Wait for the animation to conclude

• Notice that your browser is now visiting a copy of the project in your personal space, rather than the old, group-owned one. You should also see a "fork of..." remark in the top-left.

Now, clone to it to your computer

• On the right side, look for the clone URL

• Copy that to the clipboard

• Open a terminal and type: "git clone " (including the space, but not including the quotation marks)

• Use your terminal to "paste" the URL in. (Make sure it starts with https; if not, it is likely to cause problems for students who do not have SSH keys set up, which will probably be the majority of students.)

• Press enter to do the "git clone" operation.

• Once you've done that, "cd" into the directory.

Now, make sure you have the project properly set up

• Open index.html in your favorite text editor -- it should look like a regular HTML page

• Open index.html in your favorite web browser -- it should render basically the same as http://purdue.openhatch.org/

• Make a test change in index.html, save, and reload in the browser. Make sure what you see in the the browser reflects that change.

• Undo that change, with your editor, save, and then reload in the browser. Make sure what you see in the browser reflects that change.

Find a task

Now, find a bug on the project's issue tracker that you will work on, and assign it to yourself!

Now, work with your text editor to resolve it!

Commit and push

Now, commit your changes by typing:

   git add index.html

   git commit -m "Explanation of my changes"

Now, publish those changes on Github by typing:

   git push

Now, visit Github and make sure your personal fork contains those changes.

Create pull request

Now, visit your personal fork and click the "Pull requests" button on the right. This will offer you the chance to "Create...". Explain what you did, and leave a remark that this relates to the issue number you saw.

Now, get feedback from the project's maintainer, and eagerly await your pull request getting merged!