Researching for a Project
Before attempting to contribute to higher-level projects, I take this as an opportunity to familiarise myself with the approach and manners to contributing to open-source projects in Github by contributing to a smaller issue.
When looking for my first issue, I look for projects that are tagged under "good first issue" or "first timers only". After going through various projects on GitHub, I decided to make my first contribution on "mindsdb" an open source project that creates API that would enables developers to quickly integrate machine learning into applications. It is also an API that I have used and experimented using in the past so I was interested in finding ways to contribute to the project.
The issue I decided to contribute to is a documentation issue. (Screenshot below). The issue was fairly straightforward. I would go to the "/docs/mint.json" file and append with the latest data integrated to the project, in this case it is "data-integrations/google-sheets"
I was able to resolve and push this issue fairly quickly as it is a straight forward issue. I made sure to follow the project's "Contributing" guidelines and ensure that my commit is formatted accordingly to the project's standard (e.g. including issue number fixed, changes made and configuring the checklist).
However, as I was waiting for feedback and an update on my commit, I received a notification in regards to the Contributor License Agreement (CLA). Initially, I thought I need to do another pull request to sign the license agreement, however quickly realised my mistake and amended it (Screenshot below).
Once I signed the CLA my commit was quickly merged with the project.
Reflection
By starting a small contribution allowed me to familiarise myself with contributing in open source projects and has helped me gained a little bit of confidence in the process. On top of having my first contribution merged, I also gained 2 GitHub achievement (Screenshot below)
This contribution is also the first time I applied the Command-line interface taught in Week 3 During class to fork, clone, and commit my contribution.
I was able to apply the knowledge I learned from Week 4's lecture on Licenses while working on the MindsDB project. The lecture gave me more confidence in my contributions, especially because I understood the importance of signing the Contributor License Agreement (CLA) before contributing to the project. Being fully informed about the licenses helped me contribute more confidently, knowing how my work would be used.
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