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Jess Lee for The DEV Team

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Happy Hacktoberfest! 🎃

For the past seven years, @DigitalOcean has hosted Hacktoberfest: a community-wide celebration of open source.

Here's how to participate and a few details:

  • Sign up to participate
  • Make at least four pull requests (PRs).
  • PRs can be made in any participating GitHub-hosted repository/project
  • Your PRs will count toward your participation if they are in a repo with the hacktoberfest topic and once they have been merged, approved by a maintainer, or labeled as hacktoberfest-accepted.
  • Maintainers can opt-in to participate by classifying their projects with the hacktoberfest topic (find a list of opted-in projects here )
  • Any PR with the hacktoberfest-accepted label, submitted to any public GitHub repository, with or without the hacktoberfest topic, will be considered valid.

* Updated October 5

Before diving into the fun, please read our note about PR etiquette to ensure that you're making meaningful and valuable contributions this month.

Through your participation, you'll boost your open source cred and possibly earn some awesome Hacktoberfest rewards. We’re particularly excited that Hacktoberfest is offering a plant-a-tree alternative prize for those who want to forgo a shirt in favor of helping the planet. 💚

DEV is proud to be a co-host of Hacktoberfest for the second year in a row! That means when you get your SWAG pack, it will include DEV prizes, too! You'll also get a special Hacktoberfest 2020 badge for your DEV profile when you complete those four valid PRs.

Read on for more details.

Contents:


⭐ Share your Hacktoberfest Journey on DEV

We will be paying special attention to Hacktoberfest content that is published here on DEV and using the #hacktoberfest tag frequently ourselves.

Wondering what kind of Hacktoberfest post to share on DEV? Click here for a Hacktoberfest post template where you can choose between these ideas — or write an entirely different type of Hacktoberfest post!

We can't wait to read your stories on which projects you participated in, what issues you ran into and how you solved the bug or built the feature! Posts that help guide other contributors are especially encouraged. ❀

⭐ DEV Listings for Hacktoberfest Events

In a pre-COVID world, Hacktoberfest included real-life meetups (remember those?). While that's not an option this year, there are plenty of virtual gatherings for both contributors and maintainers celebrating Hacktoberfest. Tell us about yours (and include a registration link) via DEV Listings!

Create a DEV listing for your event

⭐ Join DEV/Forem on Twitch

Throughout Hacktoberfest, we'll be livestreaming on Twitch on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays! Follow us on Twitch at twitch.tv/thepracticaldev to be notified when a stream begins. For reference, here's the schedule breakdown:

  • Mondays @ 5 PM UTC: Community gratitude & contributor shoutouts @coffeecraftcode and @nickytonline
  • Tuesdays @ 2 PM UTC: Live-coding and Forem project overviews with @nickytonline, special guests, and the raise.dev team
  • Thursdays @ 5 PM UTC: Pair-programming with @nickytonline

Stay tuned for weekly posts previewing the Monday stream and recapping the Tuesday+Thursday streams on DEV! đŸ‘Ÿ

⭐ Find a project, share a project!

Whether you are a contributor or maintainer, our Hacktoberfest project thread is a great place to surface your project for Hacktoberfest participants or find one to work on:

As a contributor, it’s important to do your research on what projects are actively looking for contributions and this thread is a resource for that.

As a maintainer, be sure to[add hacktoberfest as a topic to your repo in order to opt-in for Hacktoberfest contributions this month. If you don’t, participant’s PRs will not count towards their four PR-goal -- and your project won’t benefit from their additions.

Here’s how to classify your project as Hacktoberfest-eligible:
adding topic to repo

⭐ Share your Hacktoberfest progress, discuss, and get help

  • Tell us when you've completed all PRs in this thread
  • Discuss your experience or ask/answer a question about Hacktoberfest in this thread

⭐ Contribute to Forem!

As an open source organization, Forem is actively seeking contributors, too! We'd love to make your list of projects to contribute to this year!

Learn all about our projects here:

Notes on Hacktoberfest Etiquette for Contributors

This year, DigitalOcean has heard from a number of maintainers that they have been experiencing a number of low-quality and spammy pull requests on the first day of Hacktoberfest. This causes a headache for the hard-working maintainers who have to spend their valuable time reviewing PRs and flagging contributions as spam.

We encourage everyone to read this guide on how to be as helpful and respectful as possible when submitting pull requests:


We can't wait to read about your projects, contributions, and questions and couldn't be more excited to give open source the celebration it deserves... a global one!

If you have any questions or need help, feel free to leave them in the help and discussion thread.

Happy coding!

Top comments (243)

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diptigautam profile image
Dipti Gautam • Edited

Hii there! I'm organizing a local Hacktoberfest event from my community, Nepali Women in Computing, and we are looking for speakers! (Preferably women and non binaries)
The number of women in tech is in itself too few, and in my community, I can literally count in hands the number of women I have seen contributing in open source (and even I'm not one of them), so I am taking this as more of an opportunity to start the conversation, and introduce the culture for us to get into open source and start contributing for the sake of contributing to a community rather than complete pull requests for a t-shirt (Sorry, I don't mean to discourage Hacktoberfest, rather addressing that the community isn't there yet that the event would help get the pull requests, and that we should work on the foundations first).
My main target groups are students who are in final years of college, and early career graduates at their first jobs, or who are in the process of finding their first jobs, to get exposed to open source, so they can get this experience and leverage this thing for the professional experiences that they don't yet have, which the jobs would usually demand. And of course, develop the sense of belonging.

So, if anyone would like to share and support us, we are organizing an event on 18th October. Please help us find relevant speakers and get the word out! Thanks a lot!

[EDIT: We might be taking this event beyond Hacktoberfest, and maybe even beyond October so it's not lost in the temporary hype for this month, and give us more time to plan properly. Please reply to this comment or reach out to me via twitter if you'd like to speak and/or collaborate!]

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gursimir profile image
Gursimir

Dear Dipti,
I love your idea to motivate and support women to be into the tech field. I wanted to be a part of the event. I am open to all type of responsibilities. I am a final year computer science student.
It would be very great of you if you give me this opportunity.

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diptigautam profile image
Dipti Gautam

Hi, you can help us find speakers! :)

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maxily1 profile image
Max Iliouchenko

Hey, I just received a mail about a github badge of the Hacktoberfest?
Could anyone tell me how I get that badge (I have completed all 4 required PRs)

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graciegregory profile image
Gracie Gregory (she/her) • Edited

We will be awarding DEV badges within the next few weeks!

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joseglego profile image
Jose Lezama

Too late for the badge? I'm trying since last weekend and I can't see it!

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graciegregory profile image
Gracie Gregory (she/her) • Edited

Hi there! Apologies for the miscommunication! We are still working on awarding badges. Thanks for your patience!

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joseglego profile image
Jose Lezama

No problem at all! Thanks!

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faatehsultan profile image
Syed Faateh Sultan Kazmi

its 23 nov 2020, i didn't recieve any badge yet?

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tnir profile image
T "@tnir" N

While almost 3 weeks passed, when will ETA for the DEV badge for Hacktoberfest 2020?

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austinhuang0131 profile image
Austin Huang

Hi, I registered DEV this year but I have done 2 previous Hacktoberfests. Is it possible to reclaim the 2019 badge (I don't think DEV is a sponsor for 2018)? Thanks.

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mrjmpl3 profile image
Jose Manuel Casani Guerra

I did the last Hacktoberfest (2019), but didn't know anything about how to claim the badge for that year. I think I also lost the badge for that year u.u

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sjarva profile image
Senja Jarva

Yay! Can't wait to get my badge!đŸ€©đŸ„ł

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aaganmaskey profile image
Aagan Maskey

Thanks for your answer. It was exactly what I had been looking up for prior to posting as a new comment.

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raamyy profile image
Ramy Gamal

please read "this note" from DigitalOcean for more information on how those will be treated.

In this part of the post the this note link doesn't redirect to a DigitalOcean blog or post could you fix that?

Thanks!

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raamyy profile image
Ramy Gamal

hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/hac...

I found it, I think this is the link of the post.

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graciegregory profile image
Gracie Gregory (she/her)

Fixed! Thanks for pointing this out :)

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king11 profile image
Lakshya Singh

the link to this note isn't

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mikerogers0 profile image
Mike Rogers ✈

github.com/digitalocean/hacktoberf... - Here is the PR I think it means to link to.

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graciegregory profile image
Gracie Gregory (she/her)

Updated! Our apologies!

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graciegregory profile image
Gracie Gregory (she/her)

Sorry, y'all! Fixed!

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thefern profile image
Fernando B 🚀

They should also add rules against making PRs on your own repos if they haven't already done that.

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yasionfire profile image
Yasio

Hey. Check out coders-railroad, a fun Hacktoberfest project. Add your cart to the HF2020 train by learning how and submitting a PR :) 🚂

GitHub logo YasiOnFire / coders-railroad

Fun Hacktoberfest project

CodersRailroad 🚂

Netlify Status GitHub contributors PRs Welcome Twitter share

This is a simple project made for Hactoberfest 2020. An easy entry to Pull Requests. You can add your cart to the HF2020 train by submitting a PR.

See the train in action: >>> coders-railroad.netlify.app/ <<<

How to contribute?

  1. Fork repo
  2. Clone your fork
  3. Run yarn
  4. Add your cart to src/assets/data.json and run yarn serve to see your cart
  5. Run yarn test:unit
  6. Create your branch, commit, push, create pull request

Cart config example:

{
  "name": "YasiOnFire"
  "text": "Yasio"
  "cart": 1
}
property description
name your Github name
text your message to show on cart (max 18 chars)
cart # of cart to use (see below)

Avaiable carts:

__.oO.oOo.oOo.oOo.__
|                  | 
|        #0        | 
"OO--------------OO"=
                      
_____________________ 
|                   | 
|        #1         | 
"OO---------------OO"=
  ________________
 |                |  
 |                |  
_|       #2       |_ 
"OO--------------OO"=
      _________
 ____||_______||____


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taikon profile image
Taikon

@jess Just to clarify, I made a few PRs that were merged already when Hacktoberfest started. But none of them have the hacktoberfest label on it. You're saying that they won't count is that right? Thanks.

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graciegregory profile image
Gracie Gregory (she/her) • Edited

Hello! Here is the language from DigitalOcean's recent statement:

"We will honor all valid pull requests prior to this change, and as of October 3, 2020 at 12:00:00 UTC – and October 3 in all time zones – pull requests will only count toward earning a T-shirt or planting a tree if they are submitted in a repository classified with the ‘hacktoberfest’ topic. The pull requests will also need to be merged, approved by a maintainer, or labeled as ‘hacktoberfest-accepted’ in order to qualify. The deadline for completions, merging, labeling, and approving is November 1."

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dominikmilaniak profile image
Dominik Milaniak • Edited

Hi guys and Happy Hacktoberfest 2020! 🎉

I will share our three repos. We focus on providing knowledge and tools to make developers' and team leaders' lives better and easier. If you are interested, we are looking forward to your contributions :) Btw. you might win our custom merch if you will be the most active contributor! 😊

DX Scanner - Mostly for-developers project. Open source tool for measuring the quality of your code and suggesting improvements.
👉 Link: github.com/DXHeroes/dx-scanner

DX Knowledge Base - Mostly for-techwriters projects, all though developers can improve their writing skills as well ✍ Open source Knowledge Base with topics related to developer experience and the process of software creation.
👉 Link: github.com/DXHeroes/knowledge-base...

Pipeliner - Cool new project for Swift developers. It is a Mac OS Big Sur Widget app for monitoring your pipelines and soon, much more. It is still in early stages of development, so it is a perfect project you can shape with us and leave your permanent signature on.
👉 Link: github.com/DXHeroes/Pipeliner

Have a wonderful day!
Dominik from DX Heroes

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rafid009 profile image
Rafid Ahmed

Hey, I am having a problem with the fest. It's my first time participating. Yesterday I got a Successful pull request and it showed on my hacktober fest profile/progress. But now it is back to 0.
WHY IS THAT? Can anybody clarify my problem?

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paraspl01t profile image
Tushar Tyagi • Edited

I'm assuming this is because of new rules. Due to high number of spam PRs this hacktoberfest, contributions to only certain repositories (which have opted-in for hacktoberfest) will be counted. hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/hac...

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greengreens3 profile image
Alex Boutin

It's my first year in Hacktoberfest and I must say that I like the idea, but I have to say I'm disappointed to discover only today that the rules have changed for the selected repositories. When I started preparing for HacktoberFest, I found one project and I made some PR, even found it trough the ressources available on the website to find open source project. And today, I have my 4 PR, but all this work was for nothing in the end, because I have to now find another (Or 4. projects) in the new list that was release on the second day of the event.... Kind of disappointing....

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graciegregory profile image
Gracie Gregory (she/her) • Edited

Hi Alex! I totally hear your frustration over the rule-change. This happened to address maintainer concerns and the organizers hope it will make the overall Hacktoberfest experience more valuable for everyone.

I did want to share some info that might bring you some relief!

"We will honor all valid pull requests prior to this change, and as of October 3, 2020 at 12:00:00 UTC – and October 3 in all time zones – pull requests will only count toward earning a T-shirt or planting a tree if they are submitted in a repository classified with the ‘hacktoberfest’ topic. The pull requests will also need to be merged, approved by a maintainer, or labeled as ‘hacktoberfest-accepted’ in order to qualify. The deadline for completions, merging, labeling, and approving is November 1."

-DigitalOcean's recent statement

So, if you submitted a valid PR that was approved by a maintainer, merged, or labeled as Hacktoberfest-classified, it will count!

Hope you have a great weekend. And thanks for being part of the DEV community 🙂

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vuong profile image
vuong ⛈

It's hard to have a contribution to an OSS, I swear! So I hope if anyone receives so many spams because of this event, please be patient and try to keep it more simple. Not about the T-shirt, your answer to any spam PR can make people understand why they need to complete their PR with high responsibility. Can! Can!
Cheers!

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nektro profile image
Meghan (she/her)

Hacktoberfest may just be more bad than it is good

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tundeiness profile image
Tunde Oretade

I have a question, please. What happens when you change the github access token to the repo that was recently registered for #Hacktoberfest? seems like PRs get rejected because of this. Is there any way to fix it?

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raulgonzalezcz profile image
RaĂșl GonzĂĄlez Cruz

Thanks for this amazing event. So glad to take part in Hacktoberfest every year :) ... Are you still awarding DEV badges? Greetings from Mexicoooooo

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megabarrel profile image
Saurabh

How to get hacktoberfest batch ?

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