This week I'm going to talk about my experience with open source, what I did in my first pull request, how do I feel looking for an active project.
My Research
Open source is a big world. I searched for a list of several projects looking for an issue or something that I could do. I think that the projects are bigger than I imagined.
My strategy to find a repository was to post a comment on every kind of issue I felt it suit me. It would be my first time, so I needed something easy to understand how to manage the pull request for a project that I didn't build with a team.
My first pull request was really easy, but it took me a day to understand the project and its construction. I learned that we need to build an environment to install dependencies and run in an exclusive part of the program.
Also, I learned about another kind of files (.rst) "An RST file is a text file that contains code written in the reStructuredText markup language". Whit it you can build HTML files that build your web page. This kind of thing made me spend time understanding the project's construction.
My first impression of this assignment was that "it would be easy". Now, I think it' complicated to look for help because nobody understands the project so you should struggle with the setup or the issue request. The most difficult thing is to resolve questions in the instructions or issues' request. I guess I have to check these questions with the managers in the project or other people. I'm asking myself how to build doubts whitout sound too fool. This is the difficult part, interacting with people that I don't know/trust to demonstrate my vulnerabilities.
For my first request, it wasn't too bad. It was just to correct a reference in a file. The difficult part was to understand the code. It was a project in Python, but when I see the files .rst I was confused about how it was built.
When I did my pull request I felt really happy because It was a big aproached but also alrealized that this issue was too easy and I struggled for almost a day. Then, right now I feel pretty afraid bout my next pull request in java. It's more confusing. I already have assigned an issue in Java to serialize a module. It's a good first issue in Java. It's excited but also I'm confused about how or where to start. However, that's going to be an enter for the next essay.
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