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Guess you're a contributor now!

This is the most important file for you to read as a contributor. If written well, this file will explain everything you need to know in order to successfully contribute to the project. If a project does not have this file, you should ask for guidelines by opening an issue.

Contributing

Thanks for your interest in contributing! Please read carefully through our guidelines below to ensure that your contribution adheres to our project's standards.

Code of Conduct

To hold a safe space for all contributors, we expect all project participants to adhere to our Code of Conduct. Please read the full text so that you can understand what actions will and will not be tolerated.

Issue Tracking

We use GitHub Issues to track all tasks related to this project.

To help you get your feet wet and get you familiar with our contribution process, we have a list of friendly issues that contain tasks which are fairly easy to fix. This is a great place to get started.

Style Guide

We follow Airbnb's Style Guide.

Our linter will catch most styling issues that may exist in your code. You can check the status of your code styling by simply running npm run lint after building the project locally.

We will not accept contributions with linting errors.

Build the project locally

In order to contribute to a project on GitHub, you must first get a copy of the project running locally on your computer. This process is sometimes called a "build process", and every project's process will have different requirements. Some requirements are due to the project being hosted on GitHub, some are due to the programming language used, some are due to the project's dependencies.

There are five steps to building this project:

  1. Set up Git and Install Node.js
  2. Fork the repository
  3. Clone your fork
  4. Install dependencies
  5. Run the project

Once you get the project built, see if you can fix some issues.

Set up Git and Install Node.js

If you've never written JavaScript before, don't sweat! This exercise only requires fundamental language skills, you should be able to adapt from your favorite language.

All GitHub projects are backed by a version control software called Git. You'll need to set up Git in order to contribute to any project on GitHub.

This specific project is written in JavaScript and uses Node.js as it's runtime. You'll need to install Node.js in order to run the project.

Fork the repository

A fork is a copy of a repository. Forking a repository lets you to make changes to your copy without affecting any of the original code.

Click Fork (in the top-right corner of the page) to copy this repository to your GitHub account.

Clone your fork

A clone is a downloaded version of a repository. Cloning our fork lets you download a copy of the repository to your computer.

Use git to clone your fork

$ git clone https://github.com/YOUR-USERNAME/contribute-to-open-source

Install dependencies

Did you know that the author usually does not write all of the code in a project?

The beauty of open source is that you can install and use code that other people have written, allowing you to focus on the unique requirements of your project. Third-party code that your project installs is called a dependency because it is required to work.

This project uses npm, a command-line tool bundled with Node.js, to maintain third-party dependencies.

First, navigate into the project's directory

$ cd contribute-to-open-source

Next, use npm to install the project' dependencies

$ npm install

Run the project

In addition to installing dependencies, npm also lets you run commands defined by the project's author. This project has a few commands defined.

Check the code's style against the style guide

$ npm run lint

Run an automated test suite

$ npm test

Run an automate test suite and re-run the tests when a file changes

$ npm test -- --watch

Submit a Pull Request

Remember how making changes on a fork doesn't affect the original code? Well, in order to fix an issue in the main project, you want to change the original code. A pull request is a GitHub feature that lets you do just that!

There are three steps to submitting a pull request:

  1. Save your changes locally
  2. Send your changes to your fork
  3. Open a Pull Request

These instructions are designed to explain the bare minimum steps in a beginner-friendly way. If you find yourself hungry for more details (or get stuck), I applaud and encourage you to continue research on your own. You'll find no lack of amazing articles on this topic.

Save your changes locally

First, get a list of all the files you have changed.

$ git status

Next, stage the file you want to save. This will add the file to a new list that is ready to be saved.

$ git add src/calculator.js
$ git add src/calculator.test.js

Next, verify that the file has been staged correctly. Notice that the text color has changed, and your file is now in a list that says "Changes to be committed" instead of "Changes not staged for commit"

$ git status

Finally, save your staged files.

$ git commit -m "Implement _check"

You'll often hear this process called committing changes. It's the exact same thing.

Send your changes to your fork

With one simple git command, you can send the changes you just committed locally to your fork on GitHub.

$ git push origin master

Open a Pull Request

  1. Find the New Pull Request button
  2. Select the option to compare across forks
  3. Select your username in the head fork option
  4. Select your username in the base option* pr
  5. Click Create Pull Request
* This is a weird requirement. In the real-world, most projects will expect you to open a Pull Request against the master base branch. Can you guess why it's needed here?

License

By contributing, you agree that your contributions will be licensed under its MIT license.