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Wednesday
Aug242011

How to contribute to Open Source Projects via Github

I'm not an expert at Github but I use it a lot to "consume" libraries that can be found in many high quality repositories.


Yesterday, I read a very small snippet from @cocoanetics' blog that seems to be a very good starting point to learn more about Git in general and how it can fit into a workflow of a contributor. Here is an excerpt from the post which I commented to the best of my current Git knowledge:

Generally the process to contribute to any open source project on GitHub is really simple once you did it for the first time.

  1. You set up git and GitHub: you'll be able to learn more about this process by searching the web with "github tutorials" or "git tutorials".
  2. You fork a project you want to contribute something: this will create a different branch, your own so you can start your own work and eventually contribute to the master.
  3. You clone your fork to your local hard disk: this step is essentials as it will clone to your local machine the repository that you forked in the previous step.
  4. You modify your local copy and commit the changes, providing sensible descriptions in the commit messages: changes are committed to your forked branch. See the following step.
  5. You push your local clone to your online fork: so your changes becomes available on Github.
  6. You create a pull request for the original master: in order to see other's changes to the repository you forked, you ask for them to be integrated into your forked branch with a pull. 
  7. The owner might require some further changes, he will communicate with you via the pull request. If you respond to such e-mails they will automatically be appended to the conversion: a pull request notifies the owner (the master) of the repository of your changes.
  8. Further commits you make to the branch you pushed will show up as updates to the pull request: obvious.
  9. Finally when the owner is happy he can merge your changes into the master with just one button: obvious too. 
Any comments on this workflow? Feel free to share. 

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