HacktoberFest - Getting Started 🎃

This repository is meant to provide you with the support and platform for making your first steps into the world of Open Source and HacktoberFest 2021. We have a ton of mini projects and quests (aka issues) which can help you getting your first pull requests into HacktoberFest and getting a feel of open source.

What is HacktoberFest?

Hacktoberfest, in its 8th year, is a month-long celebration of open source software run by DigitalOcean. During the month of October, you are invited to join open-source software enthusiasts, beginners, and the developer community by contributing to open-source projects.

Unlike other HacktoberFest repositories, this repository also has an extra goal of helping students get the hang of identifying ways to solve problems in codes written by others. The sample codes in this repository are far from ideal and contain a lot of errors, bugs and bad code practices. Your job is to create pull requests containing fixes for these issues. Aside, from the ones listed in the issues panel, you may also create pull requests if you feel that anything in a code is inefficient and can be done in a better, more reasonable way.

What should I do?

In this repository, we have a ton of mini-programs. These programs are by no means ideal and have a lot of bugs, errors and things which can be improved. A few of these have been highlighted in the Issues panel of this repository.

Your job is to fork this repository, fix these issues and create a pull request containing your fixes. Your pull request should mention the Issue ID of the issue you are attempting to fix. Your pull request will be reviewed and accepted if it is valid and meaningful. Every accepted pull request will count towards your HacktoberFest points. Please make sure you register on the HacktoberFest website and link your Github before making any pull request.

You may also make your own additions to the programs (which you believe will be meaningful) and make a pull request even if it hasn't been mentioned on the issues panel.

As you may notice, a lot of these programs are incomplete. As you contributors fix issues, we will be adding new issues related to these programs and adding new issues in other domains as well.

How to make a Pull Request?

Before anything, you should get acquianted with the basics of the using GitHub for open source.

  1. Create a fork of this repository by clicking "fork" on the top right of your screen. In simple terms, this will create a copy of the repository on your GitHub account.
  2. Clone your forked repo to your local computer: git clone https://github.com/your_username/hacktoberfest.git Don't forget to replace your_username with your GitHub username.
  3. Make whatever updates, fixes and changes you need to make.
  4. Commit and push your changes to GitHub.
    git add .
    git commit -m 'Commit Message'
    git push origin main
    
    Replace 'Commit Message' with a meaningful short description of whatever changes you made.
  5. Open your forked repository on GitHub and click on the New Pull Request button.
  6. Type in the details of your pull request (what changes you made, whether it was meant to solve some issue, etc) and submit it.
  7. Wait for the pull request to be approved. We will provide necessary feedback as required.

Alternatively, you can perform some tasks directly from the web interface of GitHub. You can refer to these extra resources for Git and Github:

Continue once you think you have understood the above steps.

I think I understand

Cool perfect! Now let's start working on some real code.

  1. Go to the issues panel of our repository. There are a lot of issues which have been reported in various files and mini-projects of the repository.
  2. In your forked repository, make the changes required to solve this issue and make a new pull request.
  3. Don't forget to mention the issue ID like Fixes #40 in your pull request description.

Rules

  • Spam or poor quality pull requests will be rejected.
  • Since the aim of this repository is to help beginners get familiar with working in open source, we will be having a limit of 2 issues per person in this repository. Note that you may still fix any non reported issues and make meaningful updates to the code.
  • Provide meaningful commit messages and pull request descriptions.
  • Be polite and don't discriminate. Open Source is open to all!
  • Have fun and be sure to learn a lot :D

Go On

Don't stop here. This repository is just your first steps into Hacktober/Open Source. Explore more repositories on GitHub, contribute to various projects and improve your Git skills.