release 0.3 - humphd/topics-in-open-source-2024 GitHub Wiki

Release 0.3

Due Date

Nov 20, 2024 by midnight

Overview

In Release 0.1 and the initial Labs, you were asked to become familiar working on an open source project on GitHub. This included working with git, filling issues, creating pull requests, receiving and conducting code reviews, etc.

In Release 0.2, you were asked to take what you'd learned in 0.1, and start to expand your abilities, working on 4 pull requests in various open source projects. This helped to prepare you to work on larger and more complex projects

For your 0.3 release, you are asked to continue this progression, focusing on:

working in larger open source projects
going deeper into projects vs. always finding new repos to work on
doing open source work over a longer time period vs. only spending one week per PR

Requirements

For 0.3 you will work on at least two new Pull Requests (you can do more):

You are asked to work on larger issues, or a larger number of issues, in an existing open source project. This can be one of the repos you contributed to during Hacktoberfest, or something that you wanted to do but didn't have time during 0.2.

By "larger" I don't mean "huge" or "so complicated I can't possibly hope to finish it." Instead, I want you to stretch yourself a bit more than you did in 0.2. That might mean working on a bigger code fix, attempting something in a more complex project, trying to implement a feature, etc.

In 0.2 doing a small README fix, or one-line change was fine. In 0.3 you should aim higher. If you're unsure, ask your professor for help deciding.

You also have more time to accomplish your goals in 0.3. I don't expect you to have everything completed until the due date. However, do not leave this until the final week. Start early and slowly make progress over the entire period. You have more than enough time to do something interesting--don't waste it.

Create at least 2 new Pull Request (i.e., you can do more if you want) in one or more open source projects on GitHub. These PRs must be a bit larger than anything you did for 0.2 (i.e., continue your progression). I would suggest you consider working on a repository/project that you've already worked on in the past and have setup on your machine, though this is not mandatory. You could also work on a repo that one of your friends/classmates did during Hacktoberfest, and they recommend. You could also work on a repo together with other students in the course (i.e., create a team, and fix some bugs in the same project code so you can help each other vs working along, though everyone must fix their own Issue/PR). If you want to work on something new, that's fine too. Just leave yourself enough time to get it setup properly and learn the code.

These external PRs do not need to be merged by the deadline to be counted, but your part must be complete (i.e, we can't control what project maintainers do, but you can can control your part). They also do not need to be labelled for Hacktoberfest. Anything on GitHub is fine.

Blog Posts

Write blog posts about all of your work (i.e., at least 1-per PR) discussing in detail what you did, the process by which you did it, and what you learned as you went. If you're finding your PR very hard, try writing a progress report on it and what you're learning--often trying to explain things helps us unlock the answers. Make sure to show how you are measuring your progress from 0.2 with these PRs, and how successful you were with each. Include links to everything and be technical and detailed in your discussions.