After a month working on my own open source project and projects of my classmates, here comes the Hacktoberfest, a good chance for me to explore and contribute to other projects in the open source community. This month, I will try to make at least four pull requests to different repos.
Finding the Right Repo
With hundreds of thousands of repos having the #Hacktoberfest label, it can be difficult to find the right repo to work on. The first or perhaps the most important criterion is that the repo should be properly maintained, otherwise, what's the point of making a pull request if it will never be reviewed? This helps narrow down the available repos, as I can check the last update to filter the repos. Moreover, I want to find a repo with less competition, to ensure that I won't be working on the same issue with others, at least for my first attempt. I found that repos with roughly 300 stars is a good point to start with. Thirdly, I have to pick or create an issue that I'm capable to work on for my first time, and preferably a programming language that I'm familiar with, so that I can be confident working on the issue. With the above consideration, I've finally picked the first repo that I could work on.
My First Attempt
The first repo that I've worked on is a Notepad web app by Amit Merchant. It's an offline capable Notepad Progressive Web App, which could also be accessed via this link, written in mostly JavaScript. I found that the repo was properly maintained, so I tried out the app via the link. While I was exploring different functions of the app, I found the title case conversion function in the Case Converter, which is something that I need, even when writing this blog! I then started testing the function, and looked into the files to understand the structure and the codes, and suggested some improvement on the codes in this issue and made a pull request, which was mainly to include a more comprehensive set of small words that should not be capitalized, and to better handle the edge case of title case conversion.
Lessons Learnt and Future Planning
Finally I've made my first pull request in open source community outside school. What I didn't expect was the time spent on finding a good repo and issue to work on, which can actually be longer than working on the issue itself, especially with the large number of repos with the #Hacktoberfest label. At first, I planned to work on issue one by one, but after my first attempt, I understood that it could take some time for the maintainer to review the issues and pull requests. In the next few weeks, I will try to post/comment on multiple issues instead of doing one at a time, to allow sufficient time for the maintainers to give feedback or review the codes. This requires good time management to change the codes and make pull requests, but hopefully I can manage to complete four pull requests, and preferably get them approved by the end of this month!
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