Hey amigos! Well if you reached here by googling ‘Bug fix’ or similar, or are following me:). This might help you get started with contributing to Open Source or bug fixing.
First of all I tried contributing to Debian, as I was already packaging for Debian-Diaspora. But later I found Debian a bit difficult in the beginning. I tried to get help on IRC, got some firing too due to asking silly questions or maybe the other person’s Karma was bad :P. Then I thought that contributing to Open Source need a lot of homework from our side like reading the wiki pages, going through the bug list (which is longer than wiki page, that are already confusing). Then someone referred me to GNOME-Love wiki page as it was well documented.
And then My journey to first bug began at GNOME. A very friendly IRC channel that I have come across; very humble, polite and helpful people on this IRC channel.
@ #Gnome-Love: I asked them that I am new here and would like to do some Open Source Contribution.
They love it when we volunteer to contribute to their projects and fix codes for them and make life easier for the users. They asked me about programming language that I prefer and asked me to join #gnome-music.
Steps to follow:
1. Setup a virtual box machine or install the latest Linux distro of your choice (Latest Fedora is preferred for GNOME development) on your machine.
2. Update the package repositories and upgrade the packages. For steps to do this follow steps here. (For fedora use yum upgrade instead of apt-get upgrade).
3. Install prerequisites and dependencies and setup jhbuild for GNOME applications. For setting up jhbuild follow steps here.(Will be updated soon)
4. Build GNOME-application and test the application.
5. Read the source code and learn playing around with version control system (git, mercurial, svn, etc.).
6. Fork the main repository to your github account and then clone the repository.
7. Select a bug from Bugzilla.
8. Contact the mentor of the bug on IRC and start hacking.
9. Test your patch and when satisfied, commit the changes and push the local changes to your forked repository.
10. Create a pull request in the main repository of the project.
Note: Feel free to ask on IRC when you are stuck or have any errors or problems while following any step.
Let the Windows be open, and feel the Freedom.
Jackson's Blog 