Most folks get stuck in open-source on one of the three following barriers:

• Getting Started
• Building the PR on a Forked Repo
• Managing feelings around the review process

I want to remove those barriers for you, and give you a realistic view of how to contribute to open-source projects, and get your PRs merged.

Watch the Recording

Slides

References

I don’t recommend picking an issue based on it being a “Good First Issue” but these sites are good to identify your “Good First Repo”.

• Good First Issue
• Good First Issues

Here are a few of the PRs I’ve worked on that I mentioned in my talk.

• ComparisonValidator is a nice example of extending functionality.
• Documentation is hard, but always needed. Here’s documentation explaining how Rails’s order works.
• Let’s add Liquid Tags to Forem! This taught me about Liquid tags so I was ready for Jekyll-Twitch.
• Unloved PR that taught me about Forked Repos.
• CASA has small focused issues. This leads to small PRs.

Here are a few Ruby Repos I mentioned and recommend.

• CASA is a Ruby For Good Rails app that organizes volunteers for foster youth. They have GREAT issues, amazing response time, and are incredibly welcoming.
• ConfBuddies is a Rails app that helps you attend conferences with your friends! I’m the maintainer, so if you need a friendly face, this is a good place to start.
• Forem, the platform supporting Dev.To and CodeNewbies, has a welcoming community, and are incredibly responsive to new PRs, however, I’ve had issues with their Docker dev setup.
• Rails is a web application framework in Ruby. I’m not going to lie to you. Getting a PR merged here is challenging. There’s a lot of feedback, a lot of contributors, and not a lot of maintainers. But you can have a lot of impact.
• Jekyll-Twitch was mentioned, but is actually feature complete. You can make your own gem though!