Complete Guide to Open Source Contributions using Github 01

Open source contributions are important source of learning for software developers today. A practical guide to start contributing to open source projects is here. 

I highly recommend to watch this playlist, you could find the link in the post. Now Lets see the playlist as different level of procedures, not only to become an open source contributor, but more than a developer. 

Here I have his playlist for Open Source contributions using Github in Dev Sense [youtube channel], Ashutosh Hathidara. 

My friend have a video series in which he will explain everything in detail about what is open source? Why it is there for free? This series will also contain git tutorials for common git commands (pull, add, commit, push) and advanced git commands (merge, rebase, fetch, upstream). 

He will demonstrate by creating pull request and issues. He will also have words about Google Summer Code and Outreach programs for open source contributions. 

Lets start, with Github Introduction

We are going to use Github as the hosting provider. Actually Github is not alone for hosting files, we can able to create or edit Projects files which could be shared for others for accessing it. For simple understanding Github is used for hosting your projects and assigning restrictions and more and more. We'll look deeper in this in upcoming posts.

Git is basically known for its code tracing feature and Github is more familiar as it can store code and allow restrictions to access the code. It also includes Code Tracing Feature. So these are the things which can be done remotely. So this there is no need to be everyone of the team in to be same place to access the files. They can use their API's to access the project from anywhere. 

Now let see how does it help for open source ?

Here at github you can license your project and you can allow others to make a room for improvements for your project.

So we had few details about Github , Lets dive in step approach to get great insights

Github is available as Github Desktop and as website. There is also an android application but with certain limits. So most probably the website is the one which was popularly used.

How to create a Repository ?

Step 1 : First open the Github. And do the sign up process or if you already have an account just login.

Step 2 : As you login there will be a feed space at the middle where you could find the latest actions of people you follow.

Step 3 : At the left pane you could look the list of repositories you've created , and if you not have any repositories , create new repository and give a repository name and that was unique.

Step 4: And the Description text box of the repository is not mandatory , you can state some words describing the repository. 

Step 5 : Then you can make the repository either public or private, that is based on your interest.

Note : If that was public the repository is visible to all, but no one can change the code stored in your repository.

Step 6: There will be few additional files that could be initialized with repository. Such as (readme , git ignore) these will be explained later , as of now select readme.

Step 7 : And there you can choose the type of License templates you can choose as per your need and expectations. Mostly for opensource projects the license states  that you can access the files and use for your projects or products, but you cannot claim that as your own project.

Step 8: Click on Create repository and you could see the repository with readme file consists the markdown structure of the repository name and description.

Now you have created the repository successfully and now we can learn some of the most used options and powerful commands in the Github on the next post.

Follow the series and get deeper into Git.

 

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