Getting Started with Hacktoberfest: My First Open-Source Contributions

#hacktoberfest #opensource #coding

Hacktoberfest has officially kicked off! If you’re unfamiliar with it, Hacktoberfest is an annual event held every October encouraging people to contribute to open-source software. The best part is that it doesn't matter if you are a newbie or a senior developer, as long you a know a bit about git, GitHub and making pull requests, you are good!

Since I’m still fairly new to open-source development, I wasn’t exactly sure where to begin. My professor for OSD600 told me that even small contributions, like fixing typos makes a difference. These smaller tasks are a good way to get used to reading contribution guidelines and submitting PRs. He even gave an example of a typo fix. So, I went ahead and submitted my first PR for, fixing a typo in NATS.io documentation

While I’m not certain if my PR will be merged, I know this particular contribution wasn’t for a Hacktoberfest-labelled repository, so it won’t count toward the event. However, it still counts toward my OSD600 course, so it’s a win either way.

So, I submitted another PR to a project called TLDR, which is a popular repository that provides concise explanations for various terminal commands. The TLDR project is part of Hacktoberfest, so this contribution will count toward the event. My contribution involved documenting commands for the Azure CLI, specifically az disk, which is used for managing Azure disks. I read through the contribution guidelines, forked the repository, created a new branch, made my updates, and submitted the PR with notes on the changes I made.

Overall, this week has been a valuable introduction to open-source contributions. I’ve already learned a lot, and I’m eager to take on more complex challenges as the event progresses. Here’s hoping for more interesting contributions in the coming weeks!