Contributing to Open Source Projects on GitHub

Agenda

• Open Source is Cool
• Efficient and Effective Collaboration
• Version Control Tooling

Open Source is Cool

• Software needs to change
  • Bugs
  • Enhancements
• Closed source, you can lobby and hope
• Open source, you can lobby and help

Collaboration – Submitting Issues

• Issue Tracker
  • support.dnnsoftware.com
  • DNN Community Voice
  • GitHub Issues
• Contribution policy
• Check for duplicates

Collaboration – Submitting Bugs

• What's it do?
• What's it supposed to do?
  • Are you using it right?
  • Are you sure?
• How'd you get it to do that?
  • Easy to follow steps (that work)
  • Simple demo extension (or site backup)
  • Patch with failing unit test
• Only one issue at a time

Collaboration – Submitting Patches

• Is it worth your time?
  • Is it worth their time?
• Consistent approach
• Complete and isolated
• Start a discussion
  • Twitter
  • Email
• Get a sponsor

Source Control

• GitHub

Source Control – Git

• Learn the command line
• Use a graphical tool
  • Git Extensions
  • SourceTree
  • Tower
• DVCS

Source Control – Workflow

1. Get latest
   • git fetch --all; git merge repo/branch
2. Branch
   • git checkout -b DNN-12345678
3. ????
4. Verify change(s)
   • git status
   • git difftool
5. Commit change(s)
   • git add -A; git commit
6. Publish change(s)
   • git push -u origin DNN-12345678
   • Submit pull request from GitHub.com
7. Revert to latest
   • git checkout development

Concluding

• Contributing is valuable for everyone
  • Especially when done well
• Lobby your boss to be able to contribute
• Be known as a quality contributor
• Be good natured
• Push for openness

Wrap Up

• Open Source is Cool
• Efficient and Effective Collaboration
• Version Control Tooling
• Making it Better for Everyone

More Info

• http://try.github.com
• http://code.google.com/p/gitextensions
• http://git-scm.com
• http://www.sourcetreeapp.com
• http://www.git-tower.com
• http://bit.ly/git-tools

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