💭 My First Open Source Contribution 💭

Hey hackers! l0rdcafé here. This post is about version control, how I learned git and in turn my first open source contribution. Up until then, my technical proficiency with version control was limited. I had a basic workflow to initialize a repository, add files, commit changes and push repositories to a remote server, in my case GitHub but that was about it.

My git workflow was a product of the aforementioned Learn Enough tutorial on version control, GitHub's Guides and trial and error within reasonable limits. Until one day after updating my tech stack, (more on that to come later!) and getting browser-sync, which starts a local web server that updates browser on file changes. I noticed the tldr pages were missing a page for browser-sync after needing to look up some syntax examples.

Seeing an opportunity to contribute, I went to the GitHub tldr repo, forked a copy from its master branch, and created my one-page contribution to the tldr. Again, jellyc0la's guidance was invaluable to my success, helping me ensure adherence to the standardized format of the tldr pages. Inevitably and due to my inexperience with git as well as the CI server, I committed one too many changes.

Fearful it might reflect a lack of professionalism, I learned about git rebase with the help of jellyc0la, which enables you to alter the history of commits in a variety of ways. And after mostly trial and error, tweaking the git log, I pushed my changes for submission. My contribution finally passed the CI and was to be reviewed by the maintainer. Within a day or two, the first maintainer approved the changes, and notified the second maintainer to review my pull request. A month later, it was finally approved and my contribution was merged to the master branch of the tldr pages.

In conclusion, even though I was inexperienced with version control; my workflow, technical sophistication and knowledge lacking, my first open source contribution helped me learn more git and gain valuable experience under my belt with pull requests, forks, git rebase even more than tutorials ever did. And this goes to show that nothing beats immersion when it comes to learning.