Contributing to Open Source Software

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Introduction

This page aims to document the general process for contributing to open source software on the Web.

There are different platforms for hosting open-source software projects, with GitHub being one of the most popular.

Therefore, this page will focus on GitHub.

Pre-Requisites

GitHub hosts open-source software repositories using the version control system (VCS) git.

1. First, you need to install git on your machine. Either of the below links are good references:

2. Next, create an account on GitHub.

Contribution Process

The process is generally the same for contributing to any GitHub repository.

Typically, when you don't have write permissions for the repository, you need to perform the following steps:

1. Fork the repository

2. Clone your fork

3. Perform, and test your changes locally (preferably on a dedicated branch)

4. Push your changes to your remote fork

5. Submit a Pull Request to the "upstream" repository

The following article outlines this process in further detail:

https://akrabat.com/the-beginners-guide-to-contributing-to-a-github-project/

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