A B E G I N N E R S G U I D E T O C O N T R I B U T I N G O P E N S O U R C E C O D E !R O B S H A R P H E A D O F T E C H N O L O G Y @ R AT E C I T Y. C O M . A U !

P L A Y S W E L L W I T H O T H E R S

• Open-source software (OSS) is computer software with its source code made available with a license in which the copyright holder provides the rights to study, change and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose. [Wikipedia]

C O N S I D E R Y O U R S TA C K

• HAML [MIT]

• Rails [MIT]

• MRI Ruby [BSD]

• Postgres [PostgresQL, like BSD/MIT]

• Unicorn [GPL3]

• Nginx [BSD]

W H AT S H O U L D I W O R K O N ?

• Follow your heart

• Failing that, scratch an itch

W H AT D I D I D O ?

• I scratched an itch

!

!

• remote_table present tabular data from in a variety of formats in a nice Enumerable data structure

• Oddly, missing JSON support

W H AT D I D I D O ?

1. Worked out how the current handlers work

2. Determined a close match to borrow structure from

3. Wrote tests for the new behaviour

4. Implemented the new behaviour

5. Documented the new behaviour

6. PR

D I G G I N G A R O U N D C O D E

• To add JSON, first understand YAML

D I G G I N G A R O U N D C O D E

W H AT D I D I D O ?

1. Worked out how the current handlers work

2. Determined a close match to borrow structure from

3. Wrote tests for the new behaviour

4. Implemented the new behaviour

5. Documented the new behaviour

6. PR

T I M E PA S S E S

• Create tests to support the intended changes

• Model tests on existing uses of the API

W H AT D I D I D O ?

1. Worked out how the current handlers work

2. Determined a close match to borrow structure from

3. Wrote tests for the new behaviour

4. Implemented the new behaviour

5. Documented the new behaviour

6. PR

I M P L E M E N T

• Keep to existing conventions

• Existing YML Code <—-> New JSON Code

W H AT D I D I D O ?

1. Worked out how the current handlers work

2. Determined a close match to borrow structure from

3. Wrote tests for the new behaviour

4. Implemented the new behaviour

5. Documented the new behaviour

6. Pull Request

D O C U M E N T D O C U M E N T D O C U M E N T

• The biggest failing in Open Source is documentation.

• You’re better than that - show off!

P U L L R E Q U E S T S

• Always squash before submitting a PR

• Comment your code

• Check the contributors guide for weird stuff

C O N T R I B U T I N G . M D

• Smart maintainers are explicit in their requirements

R E A D M E . M D

• Some repos are a little more cryptic

• “Committing your code to anothers repository is asking the maintainer to look after it indefinitely”

C O N T R I B U T I O N PAT T E R N S

• Scratch an itch

• Understand the repo aesthetic

• Tread lightly on the API

• Write tests

• Document your code like I’m five

• Be polite

Q U E S T I O N S ?