hey,
i have been learning programing in my spare time for the past 2 or 3 years mainy java and web development. I love linux, the linux terminal is so fast i almost get annoyed when i get all my stuff done and have nothing to do.
With this spare time i would like to contribute to open source but when i go to help i don't know where to start. i would like to know the best way to ease into it. it seems that when you jump on to github it is like getting neck deep in stuff that i have trouble understanding, i know git and unix thanks to linux so that not the problem. the main problem i have is understanding other peoples projects do i need to learn more of my language or is there a trick to understanding or some debugging programs that shows what is called and what scripts are being used.
how did u get into open source and how do u recommend getting into it and actually being a benefit to the community?
thanks logan and wendell.
I'm not the right person to answer, but my guess would be to chime in on much smaller projects. This way you are more likely to get a response from the developer(s) and that way you could get an idea of how the whole process works without getting your head in too deep. I believe in baby steps.
its quite difficult to find the smaller projects though
I don't have the sparetime, but I am in a similar position. Maybe a good approach is to list all programs you use on a regular basis and search for minor issues?
I heard that a common start in open source contribution is to improve the documentation of projects. That way you get to know the code an how thing work.
Git can be pretty messy sometimes. My advice is to just dive head on into a project, find something small and maybe a bug or two to devote your focus to. That said, it's probably not a good idea to tackle large projects either, like firefox or glibc. Find small stuff like a text editor and analyze the workflow until you're comfortable with it. Git can be famous for almost no documentation, maybe try to contact other people working on it or find a project that has some form of communicating with the contributors.
Not the one to talk but there are a lot of projects but the ones that come to my mind are big like Dolphin Emulator, Blender, Luxrender, etc. Depends on what you want to do? Game development, Rendering, Emulation, Video editing, etc.