Become an Open-Source Project Contributor on Github in 4 Minutes

It's not complicated to contribute to open-source projects on GitHub. This post will walk you through the steps to contribute to your first open-source project in just five minutes. We will use the GitHub repository of Nebula Graph, an open-source distributed graph database, for illustration purpose.

If you don’t have a GitHub account, or aren’t sure what Git is, please refer to the official website first.

In general, there are nine steps to contribute to an open-source project:

1. Clone the repo to your local machine
2. Define a pre-commit hook
3. Create a branch
4. Check the code and documentation style
5. Develop
6. Push changes to the GitHub repo
7. Create a pull request
8. Get a code review

Below is a step by step illustration in detail.

How to Be a GitHub Contributor

Fork the Repo

Fork the Nebula Graph repo by clicking on the fork button on the top of the main page. This will create a copy of this repository in your account.

You can see 

nebula

This branch is 117 commits behind vesoft-inc:master.

This branch is even with vesoft-inc:master

Clone the Repo

Clone the repository to your local machine. Click the 

Clone or download

Open a terminal and run the following git command:

~ git clone "url you just copied"

where “url you just copied” (without the quote marks) is the url to the Nebula Graph repository. See the previous picture to obtain the url. For example:

~  git clone git@https://github.com/nebula-package/nebula.git

where 

nebula-package

# Add upstream
~ cd $working_dir/nebula
~ git remote add upstream https://github.com/vesoft-inc/nebula.git

# Never push to the upstream master since your don't have the write access
~ git remote set-url --push upstream no_push

# Confirm that your remotes make sense:
# The right format is:
# origin    [email protected]:$(user)/nebula.git (fetch)
# origin    [email protected]:$(user)/nebula.git (push)
# upstream  https://github.com/vesoft-inc/nebula (fetch)
# upstream  no_push (push)
~ git remote -v

Define a Pre-Commit Hook

Please link the Nebula Graph pre-commit hook into your 

.git

Define a Pre-Commit Hook
Please link the Nebula Graph pre-commit hook into your .git directory. This hook checks your commits for formatting, building, doc generation, etc.

~ cd $working_dir/nebula/.git/hooks
~ ln -s ../../cpplint/bin/pre-commit.sh .

Create a Branch

Switch to the Nebula Graph repository directory and create a new branch named 

myfeature

~  cd nebula

// If you created your fork a while ago be sure to pull upstream changes into your local repository.
~ git fetch upstream
~ git checkout master
~ git rebase upstream/master

// Create a branch from master and switch to your branch
~ git checkout -b myfeature

Check the Code and Documentation Style

You can implement/fix your feature, comment your code in your

myfeature

We are using the clang-format to format the code. It is recommended that you configure it according to the IDE/editor you use. The following links show how to configure clang-format with vim/emacs/vscode.

vim:

https://github.com/rhysd/vim-clang-format

emacs:

https://github.com/llvm-mirror/clang/blob/master/tools/clang-format/clang-format.el

VS Code:

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/cpp/cpp-ide#_code-formatting

Develop

Edit your code and commit the changes with the following command.

~ git commit -m 'new feature'

Push Changes to the Repo

When ready to review (or just to establish an offsite backup or your work), push your branch to your fork on 

github.com

~  git push -f origin myfeature

Create a Pull Request

1. Visit your fork at 

   https://github.com/$user/nebula

    (replace $user obviously).
2. Click the 

   Compare & pull request

    button next to your 

   myfeature

   branch.

Get a Code Review

Once your pull request has been opened, it will be assigned to at least two reviewers. Those reviewers will do a thorough code review to ensure the changes meet the repository’s contributing guidelines and other quality standards.

Once the pull request is approved and merged you can pull the changes from upstream to your local repo and delete your extra branch(es).

How to Be a Nebula Graph Contributor

You can become a Nebula Graph contributor by contributing code or documentation. This section shows you how to raise doc pr to be our contributor. The follow picture shows the doc toc and you can make changes in any of the 

.md

Example: Get Started

The above picture shows the change log of the doc. You can add details, fix errors or even rewrite the whole doc to make it more organized and readable.

Please refer to the Documentation Toc to see all the Nebula Graph docs.

Last but not least, you are welcome to try Nebula Graph at our GitHub Repository. If you have any problems or suggestions please raise us an issue.

Also published here.