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I'm finding it very difficult getting into a large open source project. I consider myself an experienced developer, but for some reason it feel very intimidatin

I'm finding it very difficult getting into a large open source project. I consider myself an experienced developer, but for some reason it feel very intimidating, especially when the code base is large. I was wondering if someone could give any tips ?

yeukhon 13y ago
I try to work on the software I actually use. I don't jump on a random horse and start riding to the West. I think the first step is look at your tools. What problem do you have with your tools. Is the library you using too restricted? Does it have a null/nonetype exception rasied and not properly handle? If you can't solve it because you have no idea where to start, well, at least file a ticket :) I have limited experience too. I think the first real contribution was Ansible, rewriting the hg module was critical for my use. So I did. When I was an intern at Mozilla I learned about CSP so later when I found a few minor issues with the CSP implementation in Firefox I started volunteering. My internship didn't involve a single line of writing Firefox code so it did take a while to navigate through a couple files for a newbie. But grep, mxr.mozilla.org all helped. I think even just making demos and making documentation changes is equally powerful and useful contribution.
- n1ghtmare_ 13y ago
  Awesome! This is actually quite helpful and it gave me a couple of ideas.
avandeursen 13y ago
The students of the course had the same problem. We advised the students to look critically at recent open (or just closed) issues and pull requests, as well as e.g., the mailing list for the project at hand. Based on that they could get a feeling what was happening at the moment, and what a typical contribution looks like. If you want to contribute code, we found that it works best if you work on parts of the code that are currently under active development. This also means that you do not have to have a deep understanding of the full code base: A broad overview suffices. Some of our students also offered documentation for, e.g., installation or deployment: they struggled themselves, and offered what they learned back to the project.
- n1ghtmare_ 13y ago
  Thanks for the answer, it helps a lot !

yeukhon 13y ago

I try to work on the software I actually use. I don't jump on a random horse and start riding to the West. I think the first step is look at your tools. What problem do you have with your tools. Is the library you using too restricted? Does it have a null/nonetype exception rasied and not properly handle? If you can't solve it because you have no idea where to start, well, at least file a ticket :) I have limited experience too. I think the first real contribution was Ansible, rewriting the hg module was critical for my use. So I did. When I was an intern at Mozilla I learned about CSP so later when I found a few minor issues with the CSP implementation in Firefox I started volunteering. My internship didn't involve a single line of writing Firefox code so it did take a while to navigate through a couple files for a newbie. But grep, mxr.mozilla.org all helped. I think even just making demos and making documentation changes is equally powerful and useful contribution.

n1ghtmare_ 13y ago
Awesome! This is actually quite helpful and it gave me a couple of ideas.

avandeursen 13y ago

The students of the course had the same problem. We advised the students to look critically at recent open (or just closed) issues and pull requests, as well as e.g., the mailing list for the project at hand. Based on that they could get a feeling what was happening at the moment, and what a typical contribution looks like. If you want to contribute code, we found that it works best if you work on parts of the code that are currently under active development. This also means that you do not have to have a deep understanding of the full code base: A broad overview suffices. Some of our students also offered documentation for, e.g., installation or deployment: they struggled themselves, and offered what they learned back to the project.

n1ghtmare_ 13y ago
Thanks for the answer, it helps a lot !