Kharagpur Winter of Code(KWOC) 2020 Experience

 I was intrigued by open-source development upon watching Linus Torvalds' Ted Talk, "The mind behind Linux". Then, I start looking for opportunities to start contributing in open source and came across an amazing opportunity by Kharagpur Open Source Society at Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. They organize Kharagpur Winter of Code annually in December to help beginners started with open-source development and prepare for other programs.  


 

Getting Started:  

This five-week program started on 6 December 2020. After shortlisting projects of my choice from the website, I went through their README.md file to get an idea about the codebase. Some projects did not have clear contributions guidelines for contributors. So, I talked to mentors and upon their approval made contributing.md files suitable for their projects.

       Contributing:  

I made two pull requests in SnippetShare and CGPA Estimator project to add suitable and personalized contributing.md files. This file is helpful to potential contributors as it lets them know how to get involved in the project. It includes guidelines about how to clone the repository in their local pc and how to push changes to Github. It contains a comprehensive guide on how to find issues to work on, get in touch with project maintainers, making pull requests and specific rules that have to be followed for contributing to the project.
Then I came across a web-development project- Nature_Beauty
I made pull request to add comment section for the user in a blog.
Added a feature for the user to write a blog on the website.   
                         


To maintain work flow of repositories, I made pull requests in DarkSite, Bloggitt , QP-Generator, and NewsUp for additing issue request template. This template contains specific information which is required by project maintainers and contributors to understand what the problem or suggestion is. Issue template provides a mode for proper and concise documentation. 

Created two issue templates for

1.    Reporting a bug in the project.

2.    Requesting a feature in the project.

Final pull requests for DarkSite, CGPA_ESTIMATOR, QP-Generator, and NewsUp for adding pull request template personalised for projects according to their code and maintainer's requirements. To keep the workflow consistent and streamline the code reviewer's work, this pull request templates take the important information like issue pr is related to, the before and after image(if applicable), additional notes, version of testing and etc along with a checklist that contributor must follow before creating a pull request. For example, whether contributor has followed guidelines, ensure required testing, maintaining code writing style.

 Conclusion: 

  1. The Kharagpur Winter of Code organisers provided useful resources on their website and resolved queries which make this program experience very good. 
  2. The mentors were friendly and gave practical advice about how to write and maintain clean code. 
  3. Documentation is very crucial in open-source projects. 
  4. Learned how to read codebase, contribute and engage with open source community and learn new things.

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