Open Source Contirbuting Steps

All the steps required to contribute to open source projects in one place.

Setup

1. Read the Contributing guide for the project.

2. Fork the original("upstream") repository into your own GitHub account by clicking the "fork" button at the top of the page.

3. Clone your forked repository onto your local machine by running something like following command in your terminal/cli:

git clone https://github.com/your-username-here/project-name-here.git

4. Since you cloned the project to you local machine now you are connected with your forked repositroy you did in step 2, you'll also want to connect to the original repository "upstream" to your local machine to be able to pull new changes directly to your local machine. Do this by running something like following command:

git remote add upstream https://github.com/original-repo-name/project-name.git

Workflow

• Whenever you want to contribute always do it in a new branch not the main code base, then after you finish adding/modifying whatever you want to do you will merge it with main.

Steps to Create New Branch

1. Create new branch by running the following command:

git branch branch-name

2. Switch to the new branch you just created, and start work on whatever you want:

git checkout branch-name

3. When you are done with your work, odds are that someone has made changes to the original repository "upstream", that means you need to pull/fetch new changes from "upstream" by running:

git fetch upstream

4. Now switch to main branch by running:

git checkout main

and then run the following command to merge new changes in "upsteram" to origin your forked repo.

git merge upstream/main

5. Now that your main branch is up-to-date with upstrem, merge main branch into your new branch you created in step 1, switch to your created branch:

git checkout branch-name

then merge main into it:

git merge main

Make a Pull Request

1. To send your created branch to "upstream" you need first to push the branch to your forked repo, by running:

git push origin branch-name

2. Finally, Submit the pull request in GitHub Interface. Go to your forked repo you will notice a notification that have a make pull request button, click it and follow the steps, make sure to follow the instructions if the project have a pull request template, and write good description on what you did to make it easier for mentors to understand your changes.

OSS Contributer