The Final Push

In my little mind, open source represents the clash between hope and fear. The idea that a third-year computer science student, like myself, could contribute to a repository where more than 110, 000 lines of code were committed within a month is tantalising. Let me make myself clear – I dislike game development; it is messy, has to deal with a graphical user interface, the calculations are arbitrary, code design is usually all over the place, abstraction layers are inconsistent, and so on. In other words, it is utter chaos. But that is what we dreamed of, right? To see the metaphorical phoenix rise out of the chaotic ashes? Then, that is what we shall do.

Bug Triage: In search of a bug life

This week’s assignment is a little different. Perhaps, a bit more challenging as well. First order of business is to learn about the business. So, the instructor assigned us some readings.

Go With the Flow

Contributing to open source projects requires an intermediate understanding of GitHub workflow; of course, assuming if you are using GitHub. This week’s assignment was to read more about GitHub’s workflow and get the development environment running on the local machine.

Pesticide

If the software is the crop, bugs are indeed the, well, bugs. And as farmers, we’d like to avoid them as much as possible. Hence, bug trackers. This particular assignment wanted to teach us more about how open source communities keep track of the bug lifecycle and leverage one of the core tenets of open source software development – many eyes.

Redemption

In continuation from my 4th week’s blog, this is a chance to re-acquaint myself with Git workflow – more advanced than last time. And this time, I shall not fail. Or will I? We shall see.

The Ticket to Open Source

Keeping up with the theme, our assignment this week was to read up more about open source software and understand better how to approach a project. Topics included beginner-friendly contributions, contributing through providing documentation, support, and maintenance, and a deeper dive into bug-tracking systems. Although I skimmed over the others, I chose to get a better understanding of bug trackers (or ticket trackers, as the author chooses to call it) through Karl Fogel’s book.

Collaborative Editing

This particular task has been exhausting. I quickly realized how terrible I am when it comes to following instructions. Will this jeopardize my fervent wish to contribute to open source in the future? Je ne sais pas. Regardless, there is no going back now.

Feet wetting in Git Workflow

Git workflow is one of the most important aspects of contributing to open source. Many a times I have wanted to contribute to a repository that I believe could use some of my skills – which isn’t many to begin with – but had to step back since I hadn’t the foggiest on how to open pull requests and handle forks.

Cruz. Candidate. Confusion.

This piece is about open-data contributions and community guidelines; the author is not concerned with the politics itself

Part 1: Contributing to OpenStreetMap.org

The walkthrough for using the iD editor on OpenStreetMap was very intuitive; simple click-and-drag actions that allow for powerful edits.