Contributing to a Peer’s Repo
I forked Repo-Contextor, created a branch issue-6-toml-config, and opened a Draft Pull Request. The feature added support for .repo-contextor.toml so users can save their options in a config file instead of retyping CLI arguments. I made sure that if the config file was missing, the program would fall back to defaults. If the file contained invalid TOML, it would exit with an error. I also implemented logic so that any CLI arguments would override values from the TOML file, while unknown keys would simply be ignored. A typical example configuration file might look like this:
output = "out.yaml"
format = "yaml"
path = "."
One challenge was Python version differences: older versions need tomli, while 3.11+ has tomllib. I solved this by importing tomli first and falling back to tomllib.
Reviewing a Peer’s PR in My Repo
Another student contributed to my project, ContextWeaver, through Pull Request #6.
Running the tests showed that defaults worked correctly when no config file was present, valid TOML files were loaded successfully, invalid TOML triggered an error and a non-zero exit, and unknown keys were safely ignored. The only issue I found was that CLI overrides like --format were not wired up, so I left a review comment suggesting that argparse flags be added or the README updated for clarity.
Lessons Learned
From this lab, I learned a number of important lessons. I now understand the importance of always keeping origin pointing to my fork and upstream pointing to the original repo in order to avoid permission errors when pushing. I also saw the value of Draft PRs for sharing progress early, and I learned how fetching a peer’s branch is the safest way to test their work before merging. Most importantly, I experienced how clear Issues and PR comments make collaboration much smoother and more professional.
Conclusion
By contributing to one repo and reviewing a PR in my own, I experienced both sides of open source collaboration. This lab taught me how remotes, forks, and pull requests really work in practice and gave me more confidence in working on team projects and future open source contributions.
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