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Contributing to Open Source on GitHub

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21–30 of 33 posts

Re: Contributing to Open Source on GitHub

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole "Wiki" feature comes to mind. Can I leave and take my project's wiki with me?

Sure, just add .wiki in before .git in the git URL: > git clone git@github.com:wicketstuff/core.wiki.git More of a problem would be your issues.

Cool. It would be awesome if the git-issues, all repo settings and everything else you might take with you were stored in git as well.

Re: Contributing to Open Source on GitHub

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, just add .wiki in before .git in the git URL: > git clone git@github.com:wicketstuff/core.wiki.git More of a problem would be your issues.

Cool. It would be awesome if the git-issues, all repo settings and everything else you might take with you were stored in git as well.

not stored in git (the value of revision history in issues is probably pretty low), but they are accessible via API, and fairly easily exportable [1]

[1] https://gist.github.com/unbracketed/3380407

Re: Contributing to Open Source on GitHub

#24
GitHub can be a little to good at pushing this. I've been taken to task for not having docs for my Open Source project which is on GitHub.

"But I do, they are on this website here and there is a link to them at the very top of the README!"

Didn't matter, I got told off for what was really "you don't have docs in the usual place on GitHub."

Very frustrating.

@patio11 I think it was made a comment in a blog about don't put Open Source on GitHub because you really build up GitHub's name not your own, which is an interesting point to discuss. EDIT: found it https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/do-not-en...

"This is one reason why, while I love OSS, I would suggest people not immediately throw their OSS on Github. That makes it very easy for developers to consume your code, but it does not make it easy for you to show the impact of that code to other people, particularly to non-technical stakeholders. To the extent that people's lives are meaningfully improved by your code, the credit (and observable citations) often goes to Github rather than going to you. If you're going to spend weeks or months of time writing meaningful OSS libraries, make a stand-alone web presence for them."

(For my project I'm using GitHub Git, Github issues, but everything else is on a website on a domain I control.)

Re: Contributing to Open Source on GitHub

#25
They make no mention of mailing lists or forums, which most sufficiently large open source projects have. It's often a good idea to sign up and get a feel for how things are done in a given commmunity, and for large changes, suggest them on the mailing list for discussion before opening a bug report or writing code.

Re: Contributing to Open Source on GitHub

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, just add .wiki in before .git in the git URL: > git clone git@github.com:wicketstuff/core.wiki.git More of a problem would be your issues.

Cool. It would be awesome if the git-issues, all repo settings and everything else you might take with you were stored in git as well.

I actually do this in many of my projects using BugsEverywhere [1]. Distributed bug-tracking is great when you're travelling ... or choose to be off-line.

[1] http://www.bugseverywhere.org/

Re: Contributing to Open Source on GitHub

#28

Are there people out there that don't understand that software uses readmes and licenses, yet also are able to contribute code? I mean, people can program but not know how to contribute? I find this hard to imagine.

Yes.

There are people who are just learning to code, who got the advice, find a simple open source project and help.

There are people who have only done early stage classes for CS degrees that want to practice in real coding but haven't been exposed to real world development.

There are people who have been coding forever but never paid attention to that stuff because they were always part of a team and didn't worry about it.

One extreme example: we had a person wander into the local hacker space on python user's group night. She had an English degree and had never done anything nearly as technical as coding. She knew that her library science degree would entail some coding and database knowledge and wanted to get up to speed prior to needing it for coursework. She understood the concept of community work and abstract stuff about open source, but not really anything on a practical level. Within the day she was helping one of the member's pet project by copy editing the readme and some of the tech docs. I'm certain she had no idea what a readme was when she got up that morning. (not exactly a code contribution, but definitely a project contribution). Within a couple of months she was able to get her first code submission to a project.

Ignorance and ability are not as correlated as people like to think they are.

Re: Contributing to Open Source on GitHub

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, just add .wiki in before .git in the git URL: > git clone git@github.com:wicketstuff/core.wiki.git More of a problem would be your issues.

While not the person who asked, this is news to me. Thanks for sharing.

It's very nice. You can use your fav editor and update pages, then push the changes back up and they appear in the wiki.

With a few plugins and some hacking, you can get vim to just browse the wiki too. (I'm currently working on getting my scripts for this into a state that is useful).

Unrelated - there are some plugins to use the github api to browse tickets in vim too.

(note not all of these workflows make sense as a primary way of using them, but they are still useful at times).

Re: Contributing to Open Source on GitHub

#30

Are there people out there that don't understand that software uses readmes and licenses, yet also are able to contribute code? I mean, people can program but not know how to contribute? I find this hard to imagine.

Yes. There are people who are just learning to code, who got the advice, find a simple open source project and help. There are people who have only done early stage classes for CS degrees that want to practice in real coding but haven't been exposed to real world development. There are people who have been coding forever but never paid attention to that stuff because they were always part of a team and didn't worry a…

>Ignorance and ability are not as correlated as people like to think they are.

thank god there are people who understand that. It's amazing to me the number of people who equate the two. Equally ridiculous is the tendency of programmers to spew advice such as "Read the fucking wiki (or documentation)". That really doesnt help newbs who are just barely figuring out the right way to Google things. The thing about being able to find some instructions on how to do X is that it's predicated on actually knowing that instructions are out there somewhere.

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