Making my first Open Source contribution and how you can start

Introduction

Recently, I got selected for the Google Summer of Code 2023 program. I was trying for GSoC since GSoC-21 but every year I was not persistent enough and gave up. But this time I decided I will try my best to get selected. Here is how I started contributing to the Open Source project and how you can do it.

My first contribution

I dedicatedly started to contribute to open source in December.
So, I started by choosing a project that I was interested in and it was Codelabz by SCoRe Lab organization. So it is basically a technical blogging site similar to Hashnode and Medium where developers can share tutorials.

First of all, I understand the project, what it is about, and what it aims to do. Then I set it on my local computer.
Now, the setting up process is very crucial because, in most cases, it will lead you to your first contribution.

While setting up the project in my local system I faced many problems like outdated documentation and some exception that can occur in someone's computer.
After successfully setting up the project in my local system I explained to the mentors my difficulties and asked them if I can update the documentation. And they agreed happily and then I simply updated the documentation and made my first open-source contribution there. After this, I slowly started to get an idea about the project and I started to look into issues and did my further contributions.

Make your first contribution

By reading the above section you may have got an idea about how you can make your first contribution.

But here is step by step procedure for you:-

1. Choose an open-source project that interests you.

2. Just follow the documentation of the organization and try to set it on your local computer.

3. In this setup process, there is most probably something that has been changed since the documentation was written or updated, you have to find that thing in the documentation and note all the things that you noticed that were wrong in the documentation it may also include grammatical mistakes or something that needs to be updated.

4. There is a very rare chance that you will be able to set it on your local computer without any problem. Just search for that problem.

5. After you are done with your setup. Contact the mentors about the problems that you have faced during the setup process and ask for their permission to update the documentation accordingly. In most cases, they will agree with you.

6. Now update the documentation and remember to make it as good as possible.

   Congratulation on making your first contribution.✨

Conclusion

So, this was the way that worked for me. And there are many other ways in which you can make your first contribution but I think that contributing to documentation is a very easy way to start contributing to open source.

**Best of luck with your first contribution.**👍

#WeMakeDevs #opensource #gsoc