Greetings from an open-source baby

Welcome
#1

So it turned out that maybe I should have started my own topic instead of commenting on the pinned one. Let’s try this again!

Hi everyone! Super new to open source contributing in general but I’ve been looking into getting self-hosting forges (gitea specifically) since before I had a job within web-dev.

I’m self-taught through-and-through so I’m basically the worst collaborator ever, but I am also extremely open to criticism in terms of coding style and learning new stuff so feel free to enlighten me whenever there’s a chance. Basically the reason I’m here is because I don’t feel like I’m learning and contributing enough at my actual job so I want to go someplace where tech can maybe make peoples lives better?

I really want to contribute to something but also try out in the wild as time goes on, using my own server as a self-host (the reason I got it and setup my own forge is because LFS is tricky and expensive in the cloud), but it might take a moment for me to get up to speed with how everything works within these kinds of organizations and how to write good PRs etc. If anyone has super simple issues or feature requests that is basically all front-end then I’d be happy to try to help!

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#2

Hi Olof, welcome to forge friends! Contributing to open source is quite satisfying wherever you are engaged with, and you sure come with the right spirit. It doesn’t matter what one contributes, rather that one contributes, and in open source you do that on those things where your passion lies. Learn by doing, teach and be taught, and just have fun along the way :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

There’s plenty things that can be done within this community. It has a rather unique structure as FOSS projects come, as any member can initiate anything as long as there’s community consensus. On lending help on technical tasks you best consult @dachary and @pilou and join the monthly meetup. Other than that just go through some forum topics and check the repo’s and open issues.

There’s a bunch of stuff to be done on web-dev side as well, such as revamping the project website (based on Go Hugo) now the project is renamed.

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#3

Welcome :tada:

How comfortable would you be working on the Gitea web interface? The goal would be to add a new button on the issue creation page, next to milestones.

image

#4

I mean I took a quick peak at the frontend guidelines and the major hurdle is that I haven’t worked in Vue previously, but I’m going to be assuming that it’s not that difficult to wrap my head around once I get into how the repository is structured and how everything fits together. I think that the main problem for a lot of these projects is that there is a lack of proper “onboarding” for someone who is pretty junior like me, which means that there are like 5 different things that one needs to grok simultaneously and that’s just daunting.

A simple button with potential for feedback and guidance would be a super good start though! Would I just signup for the lab.forgefriends.org and try to setup my local environment? I don’t think I’ve ever worked in a repo this large and it’s gonna take me a hot minute to get working on it!

#5

Yes. I’m pretty much in the same situation, although I’m no longer junior :sweat_smile: I wrote code walkthrough while exploring the Gitea codebase. I’m yet to receive feedback and guidance, but I’m patient. The key for me, as a new Gitea contributor, is to create more value upfront than I ask in return. In a nutshell, if I spend 24 hours (that’s approximately what it took me to write the walkthrough) contributing, there is a good chance someone knowledgeable will find it worth 1 hour of their time to help me out.

I would suggest you follow a similar path to contribute to the Gitea frontend. I.e. write code walkthrough as you explore the Gitea codebase at https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea. If you already have a GitHub account, you can even work on an issue. If you are comfortable with using Discord you can chat at Gitea and maybe get help/feedback. I would help you if I could but I’m yet to explore the Gitea frontend.

Once you’re somewhat at ease with Gitea, you’ll be a great asset to forgefriends: there is a need for frontend modifications to implement federation.

Does that sound like an appealing way forward?

#6

Very much does! It’s a good chance for me to get into some bigger piece of software too, check out how it works and tinker with it. Doing front-end stuff is probably going to be my forte, but I’ve done a little bit of Go previously and I’d be interested in getting into the ORM that they’re using in Gitea.

Need to find a moment for me to try to sit down for a couple of hours to figure out my local setup before I do anything for real, but is there an issue on the GitLab fork for the button you wanted?

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#7

No, there is not. But by the time you get yourself acquainted with the Gitea frontend I’ll take the time to write it down.

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#8

@SeedlingAttempt hi! I followed your interactions on the Gitea forum and was pleased to see you got help from people in the Gitea community. But now I can’t find the thread in the search for some reason. Would you be so kind as to remind me where it is?

#9

Hmm, I don’t think I’ve posted on that forum? :thinking:

Are you thinking about @tommi who had some issues with his gitea instance? We’re trying to figure out what is wrong but we’re both pretty swamped with school stuff so it’s kind of been on the backburner for a while now.

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#10

Geez yes, I’m sorry for the confusion :slight_smile: The Gitea forum topic I was watching was this one: Impossible to push or pull, either via SSH or HTTPS - #6 by tommi - Support - Gitea :blush:

#11

All good!

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