How to contribute to open source
Vložit
- čas přidán 7. 08. 2024
- If you've never contributed to an open source project before, it may seem daunting. In this video I break down the process and show you how improving software isn't all that scary.
00:00 gdb bug
00:30 building gdb
02:32 reproducing the bug
02:54 finding the bug
04:55 adding a new setting
08:09 testing the setting
09:16 testing the fix
09:55 how to contribute
11:11 writing documentation
12:42 sending the patch
13:30 recap
Archer fish drawing by Jamie Guinan and Andreas Arnez: www.sourceware.org/gdb/mascot/ CC BY-SA 3.0 US
Tears of joy by OpenMoji: openmoji.org/library/emoji-1F... CC BY-SA 4.0
Wrench Vectors by Vecteezy: www.vecteezy.com/vector-art/5... - Věda a technologie
For me it’s usually
- identify problem
- checkout code
- attempt to build
- build fails because of missing dependencies
- spend an hour solving missing dependencies
- spend another hour looking for the correct outdated version of missing dependencies
- realize your OS doesn’t have the required version in its package manager and you have to start manually installing the dependency
- dependency now conflicts with OS version of dependency
- do arcane hackery to fix that
- one of the missing dependencies has to be built from source, and that one has another 3 dependencies that need to be built from source
- repeat previous steps 4-5 times
- obscure build error
- seems like you don’t have the correct compiler version
- attempt to manually install specific compiler version that has to be built from source
- repeat previous steps
- finally build
- tests fail
- throw computer through window
easy!
Forgot the last step:
- realize some days later that this issue is actually known and someone developed a fix for it in a branch, but it contains a significant change in the core modules, so it got pushed to the next milestone. last maintainer comment 5 years ago
"But it works on MY machine!"
Lol
at this point just use docker smh
You just demystified contributing to projects which are not in a code hosting platform such as Github or Gitlab to me, I often just feel reluctant to contribute when it comes to a project using mailing lists, it just seemed so intimidating for no reason whatsoever
Most projects will have detailed instructions. (Sometimes they're too detailed and overwhelming!)
@@strager_ Sometimes you look at the contributions instructions which turns out to be a 10 page book and just say screw it, people don't need my patch after all. "You made this? I made this!"
Contributing to open source stuff via mailing lists is a horrible work flow though. Have contributed to GDB a bunch of times. It is so unergonomic and painful.
@@simonfarre4907 I did it with wine once and it was unenjoyable
@@Zmej420BlazeIt I'm looking to get into using NixOS. Got any hints on easily preventable time consumers?
Whoa. That's some god level shit right there. I don't think I could've moved around that quickly around code, get my bearing so quickly, figure out what to change and where. Damn, 45 minutes. Would've taken me 45 DAYS. I hope I get better lol
Nice video!
I cut a lot of scrolling and thinking out of the video, of course. I'm not *that* fast at coding! 😆
@@strager_ 45 minutes is still very impressive. I have quite a bit of experience contributing to open source projects, but something like this would have probably taken me a few hours at least.
@@renx81 He scripted the changes, and then recorded them, that’s what he ‘s saying.
Always take your time, and verify that the changes you think you should be doing will actually work.
@@renx81 ^ yeah he said in the video he'd even looked at the code the day before.
I had to read through the mailinglist to even understand what he was doing
Great video! There really isn't much content out there that aligns with what you post. I really appreciate the content you produce. Great stuff, as always.
Thank you for the kind feedback. =]
Most channels are posers who know #some# things and pretend to know more than they do.
I would love to see more of these videos where you show what you did and break it down step by step.
It really helps new people getting into open source contributing
Thanks for letting us know you took a look at the code the day before. That kind of transparency is reassuring.
I would love to see more of this.
Just walking through a debugging process. It's something we all try to figure out on our own, but don't get a chance to see someone think out loud because they're self conscious or something.
Amazing. I honestly love this so much.
There are many people who livestream their coding on Twitch (including myself). A livestream is not necessarily as polished and education as a CZcams video, though.
The world needs more content like yours. Thanks a lot!
is that a monospace comic sans font? a true chad.
I think it's probably "Comic Code"
This guy reminds me how bad I am. Anybody else?
This is like watching The Matrix for the first time.
Tbh other than him using vim, I find his videos to breakdown intimidating subjects really well for more casual coders. I always thought open source was way above me, but I may give it a shot!
His keyboard strokes and geeky look intimidated me before even watching …
Nop
9:40 "i did not expect it to magically work" gotta love when this happens to you
4:15 was a good moment for me. I've started developing what I thought to be a strange habit of deleting code before trying to fully understand it. Can't tell you how many times I've dredged through random code with involving difficult mathematics only to realize hours later its not even being used anymore, its just being shadowed by a new implementation.
I think you could copy/paste from the gdb TUI window with Shift + mouse selection, without any change to gdb. It bypasses gdb mouse handling. The same happens in tmux or in vim for example.
From 1:00 onwards, typical Linux experience.
lol. On windows you just install the software which comes with all the dependencies and probably none of the source code, so you can't fix it yourself.
@@James2210 Yeah, but you don't generally have to modify most software. Plus storage is generally cheap on the desktop.
This video pushed me to finally contribute to an open-source project, thank you! :)
Cool! Which project?
@@strager_ Nvy, A minimal Neovim GUI client for Windows
I've been meaning to contribute for a while since it's not too big and complicated, but I just didn't know where to start and I also didn't have the courage for it lol
This is great content. Hope to see more videos on Opensource contribution pls.
Your channel is so good
You didn't fix the bug at all (i.e. not being able to scroll AND click to set breakpoints etc). You just provided a way to switch off a broken feature to allow another preexisting feature to work. With that mindset you could work for a large corporate dev shop ;) It was really interesting to see your process for contributing though, thanks.
I fixed it *for me*. Good enough? 😬
"oh I see whats going on..."
"I think"
"I'm not sure"
"Anyway..."
ITs cool watching you blaze around in the editor, fast af
The magic of video editing. 😉
Great video! What's the fish in the thumbnail?
The fish is gdb's archer fish mascot. www.sourceware.org/gdb/mascot/
This actually seems pretty difficult and tedious lol. But I respect your skills!
Wonderful stuff 🎉🎉
My usual problem the couple times I've tried to contribute to open source code is after writing code for like 8 hours, submitting my patch and getting in a back-and-forth with the maintainer either about whether the change was necessary in the first place, or "cool; could you actually make it do X instead" "uh, ok I guess", for another 8 hours
Yeah, it's tough! I just had that happen to me today. 😬
Luckily I can apply the patch locally.
@@strager_ Yeah, haha, you can fall back on "well FINE, I'll just enjoy my improvements over here, by myself"
Maybe the back and forth with the maintainer should happen before the work does, rather than after? Seems reasonable to allow them the opportunity to participate in planning if they would like to.
@@nerfzinet Eh...I feel like yes and no. Yes, that seems ideal and could avoid wasted work, but no, because often I make improvements or changes because I want them for something right now, and if I message some maintainer and it takes a day or two to hash out the details I probably won't feel like doing it by that point.
@@Erhannis I've never contributed to any open source project like this but I wouldn't expect it to be a quick process. People have to take the time to look at your PR and go through what you've done, maybe give you feedback if something needs to be changed. These guys don't owe us anything, they'll get to it when they get to it and they'll tell you to change stuff if they want you to change stuff. It's their code, you're just allowed to look at it and suggest changes. It's up to them to accept or reject.
Just slightly worried that software projects become less usable through previously working default functionality being hidden behind obscure settings added as bug fixes.
Yeah. =\
I'd like an IDE that takes my font changes to the imported libraries and applies that font to any class in said library... Now I've done my 2% of that task. Anyone know how and willing to do the code?
Your terminal/vim skills are pure wizardry, I can barely keep up with what you're doing, let alone the actual programming part 😆Also what keyboard are you using? It sounds so peaceful haha, so sick of hearing super clacky mechanical keyboards.
> Your terminal/vim skills are pure wizardry
Ah, the magic of video editing! =]
> Also what keyboard are you using?
Realforce 87U (Topre switches)
Bro you are a programming beast
no u
I just created a PR after watching this video, a few days ago thanks
Nice!
You are senior developer 😍
Mastering vim is the coolest thing I've ever seen
He can even exit it too 🤯
You're the Dumbledore of vim.
What’s your vim setup like? Is it default? I really like it! I’ve been wanting to get into it but haven’t looked into so much yet
My Vim is default-ish.
I hope you will do the same video for contributing to vscode repo, working on some issue, it would be super cool.
I'm a junior Data Engineer who loves the code side of the job, and man some times I wounder when I'll be that techinal capeble of doing thing by my self that fast.
Learn to edit videos and you too can be that fast!
@@strager_ hahaha this is the way
Thank you.
TIL gdb has a tui mode. :D
I find your video is really worthwhile. People tend to think contributing to open source is hard because they imagine those programs are made made by the elite or something. (Tbf a program like gdb has a lot of legacy going for it)
But in reality those programs are made from every day idiots like you and me. And that means every day idiots can write patches and fix those programs.
So thanks for lowering the barriers
Agreed! The "only elite" sentiment is exactly what I sense from newbies, and it was what I wanted to 'debunk' with this video.
@@strager_ in German we say „they also only cook with water“ :D
Meaning no one is doing anything extraordinary.
Every program is somewhat different and when we write a patch it should fit to the coding practices of the project. But if you’re somewhat sane and have common sense, it’s easy to figure it out. Just look how a similar thing was done before, copypaste and adapt
Copy paste indeed!
What key switches you use in your keyboard or whats the name of the keyboard?
Topre switches. Realforce 87U.
Nice content :)
Maybe contributing to open source projects will be some sort of path to actually having a career in coding.
thank you! how did you get autofill like minecraft in your terminal?
I use zsh-autosuggestions: github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions
You could also try Fish which has this feature (and others) built-in.
nice! do you guys know where can i start looking for projects where i can contribute?
I suggest looking at projects you already use. Dev tools and libraries. If you have hobbies, look for software projects related to those hobbies.
Can you please do a video on dev environment? For example, is that vim you're using? If yes then can you tell us what your setup looks like?
Yes, I'm using Vim (not Neovim).
I think a video on my development environment would be boring, but if people want one, I'll consider making it.
@@strager_ Yeah, please do.
@@strager_ I'd also be interested
@@strager_ would be very interesting. Please do it 😊
Would also love it!
What is the terminal you are using? That autocomplete seems nice
Terminal: GNOME Terminal
Shell: Zsh
Extensions: zsh-autosuggestions, zsh-syntax-highlighting
I recommend that you try Fish instead of Zsh+extensions. You'll get the suggestions (and many other nice features) out of the box.
Could you please tell me what a font you are used for terminal? Thanks!
Comic Code: tosche.net/fonts/comic-code
hey what's is the font that you are using for your terminal ? looks great and cosy
Comic Code: tosche.net/fonts/comic-code
@@strager_ thanks a lot :D
Previous comment was deleted because I accidentally put a link to the mailinglist in it :p
Anyway, would love to see the process of finding the commit that caused the issue with git bisect
Because I found the offending code quickly, I would have used 'git blame' rather than 'git bisect' in this situation.
Great stuff, thanks! Can you share your dot files ?
github.com/strager/dotfiles
its vim or neovim?
Anyone particular reason you use Kagi for search?
Kagi has the best search results. I never fall back to Google.
Kagi supports bang search patterns (like DuckDuckGo), keyboard navigation, and downranking domains (like geeksforgeeks.org).
this is so fubar=random looking , but at least I know why I'm not working at facebook . Wow , Kagi !
You should implement some new features in LLDB ;)
That first minute of setting up OSS projects always make me feel like I'm the dumbest person on earth, even if I'm doing roughly the same things as you.
No automated testing? Surprising that no tests needed to be modified/improved to get the CI gods happy...
Because of the project's design, an automated test of this fix would require simulating clicks in a terminal emulator. That doesn't sound fun. 😬
"Contributing to open source is easy. "
Immediately gets stuck in setup hell.
But don't worry, as someone who is trying to make wasmer run on the web, I feel your pain.
What keyboard do you use?
Realforce Topre 87U TLK.
Step one, use open source software.
Step two, get tilted by a bug.
Step three, ignore the bug while cursing out developers.
Step four, say fuck it, make some coffee and fix the bug.
What do you do other than coding?
sleeping
🛌
Hmm...any advice on how to do this if you're NOT already a S-Rank programmer?
Step 1 seems to be "already know what you are doing".
...Although I suppose if you don't know what you're doing, you should stay the heck away from important projects.
Gatekeeping sometimes exists for a reason.
> Step 1 seems to be "already know what you are doing".
Step 1 is download the code. I happened to have already done this before making this video though.
Step 2 is build the code. This is almost certainly documented clearly for a big important project.
For step 2, I tried to figure out how to build gdb but not the rest of binutils. I couldn't figure it out. I didn't put that false start in the video.
Do you think these steps are too difficult? If so, can you show me a project you had trouble with?
> Although I suppose if you don't know what you're doing, you should stay the heck away from important projects.
I disagree! If your patch is bad, they'll tell you.
@@strager_ I struggle with navigating codebases
Cue Inception theme.mp3 here because you are using a debugger to bebug a debugger
bebug
what font are you using?
Comic Code: tosche.net/fonts/comic-code
@@strager_ thanks 👍
step 1: be a fucking wizard
OK, cool - now someone come fix my open source code LOL
Not sure but your patch broke the coloring ?
Syntax highlighting broken when I built from source, not when I made my patch. My guess is that I didn't have the syntax highlighting library installed, and it was an optional dependency.
It’s been 6 months, was the contribution accepted?
Good question! It doesn't seem like it has landed in master. I'll poke the mailing list.
What is that cursed font?
Comic Code. tosche.net/fonts/comic-code
I don't think... That's what is called "easy". At least not for someone who isn't very experienced all around. Investigating why projects such as gdb fail to configure or compile is a nightmare in itself
> Investigating why projects such as gdb fail to configure or compile is a nightmare in itself
Yup! But luckily web searching error messages gets you a long way.
@@strager_ yeah... As long as there are results for the error message and Google doesn't say "no results found" :')
Had this happen much more than once
GDB tutorial from you?
Oh dear.
Perhaps.
I don't really like the thumbnail because it's really not easy to fix a lot of open source stuff. It requires a fair bit of prior knowledge specific to the project at hand to actually fix a lot of stuff.
Can you give an example?
@strager literally the example in the video you have. A lot of people don't even know what ncurses is. Or perhaps they have problems getting the dependencies for developing their project work on their machine (I spent hours trying to get dev dependencies for emacs to work on my machine just so I could build from source)
@strager for newer projects it's much easier to contribute. But something like gdb is much harder. A lot of developers might not even touch the language the tool is written in very much compared to their day job.
@strager think about the tango that lead you here.
1. Noticed a bug
2. Tried to figure out which program is the cause (this alone can take forever)
3. Look up if anyone has filed a pr for a fix on this already or look to see if anyone has this issue
4. Figure out what in the program is causing the bug
5. Build the project from source
6. Now you can begin actually working on the source code.
I guess it should be "contributing to open source is easy" rather than "fixing open source is easy". The contributing part is only about 1/4 of the video whereas the actual fixing is most of it
Build failed..... story of my life. :)
45 freaking minutes. I spend days on a single bug and try committing it 5 times while implementing suggestions by the code maintainers. Lots to learn i guess 😂 thanks for the video, its good motivation.
Some bugs are easy. Some bugs are hard.
''This will take forever'' *looks at camera*
''oop - the build failed - why did it fail''
...typical lol
🙈
Hello stranger
Who?
After watching that I feel like throwing my pc in the been and cry hahahaha
The way you talk reminds me of George R.R Martin, but a very young version of him lol
what the actual fuck is that terminal font.
Comic Code: tosche.net/fonts/comic-code
Weaponized document skimming.
I mean the first 2 min is the reason I don't like open source and linux way of doing stuff, it is just installing a lot of stuff, waiting for the console writing and getting errors, repeat until it works, if it will ever work.
That sounds like software in general, even for other OSs or in proprietary projects. 😬
Step 1: Learn how git is used on group projects. *gets coat and leaves the room*
Just going to say this out loud, I and many others like me who are fresh out of colleges will not even have knwon to look for something as ncurses and then go on to add functionality? not on the planet atleast.
Suggestion, take some people as mentees(I also will be joining the mentee list only, at first) and mentor them brother, I think if all the engineers took even 2 mentees and helped them gain the
knowledge, engineering colleges would be dead.
> [I] will not even have knwon to look for something as ncurses and then go on to add functionality?
A web search for 'how does gdb tui mode work' pointed me toward "curses": sourceware.org/gdb/onlinedocs/gdb/TUI.html ncurses in the curses library used on Linux.
24 But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came.
25 The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.
26 And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you.
27 Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.
28 And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.
29 Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.
30 And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book:
31 But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.
(Jn.20:24-31)
Can an unemployed programmer make any money, working on free software?
You can be a consultant, or do freelance work, or sell software, or get into education (like I did).
@@strager_ tried everything. I'm 54 now. Nobody wants me. Lost hope. If you know a place who doesn't care about age, let me know. So far I've been obviously rejected for age since I was 39.
@@strager_ how do I get into education?
Here's my educator journey:
1. Answer questions on Stack Overflow.
2. Help colleagues with coding questions and code reviews.
3. Stream on Twitch and answer viewer questions. (I'm still doing this.)
4. Work at an extracurricular school for kids.
5. Make CZcams videos.
Your journey will probably look different.
@@strager_ thank you.
that doesnt seem easy at all LOL
Terrible advices - no thanks.
Steps don't include vulcan mind-melt for the purpose of transferring coding skillz.
Oh right, I forgot the brain transplant.
How to think like Pro like you is my biggest problem 🥲