FOSSMeet 2019

When it comes to OSS there’s a saying that there are no users, but only contributors. Even though most of us would like to contribute back to our favorite open source packages, the process to contribute back fixes seems more complicated than it should.

This session is intended for anyone with a beginner knowledge in programming and wanting to help, to learn about how to contribute code back to the open source software they use.

By the end of the session we would have contributed to a project hosted on github and would be familiar with the contributor workflow used by most of the projects. We would be familiar with the process to find bugs, report them, navigate around the codebase, fix them, and contribute the fix upstream.

Outline

The workshop would consist of these six sections

• Introduction to how OSS works
• Introduction to Git and Github
• Introduction to Forking, Cloning and Checking out the source of a demo project
• Tips on navigating around and becoming familiar with the codebase
• Fixing the issues and pushing upstream
• Workflow on getting our patch merged to the project

Requirements

• Familiarity with any one programming language preferably Python.
• Laptop with Linux, Mac (Windows would be your responsibility :D)
• Internet

Speaker bio

I’m a third year CSE student at College of Engineering Chengannur. I am also the maker of LessPhone Launcher(Previously NoPhone).

I really love the freedom that Open Source brings to our life (Not the freedom about privacy, but the freedom to modify and customise our software to our liking down to the source). I love giving back to the software and the supporting community that I use either in code contributions, testing out features and hanging around in the issue tracker.

Links

• https://aswinmohanme.github.io/
• Github: https://github.com/aswinmohanme
• Medium: https://medium.com/@aswinmohanme
• Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=9073130401640495870
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/aswinmohanme