How to Contribute to Open Source Android Projects on GitHub?
Contributing to open-source projects is an excellent way for developers to improve their skills, gain experience, and give back to the community. Android projects on GitHub offer a rich ecosystem where you can collaborate, learn, and make a tangible impact. This guide will walk you through the steps to contribute to open-source Android projects on GitHub, from finding a project to making your first pull request.
Finding the Right Project
The first step is to find an open-source Android project that matches your interests and skill level. Here are some tips to get started:
- Explore Repositories: Use GitHub’s search functionality to find Android projects. You can filter results by language, number of stars, forks, and issues to find active and popular repositories.
- Check Issues: Look for repositories with issues labelled “good first issue” or “help wanted.” These labels indicate that the project maintainers have identified tasks suitable for newcomers.
- Read Documentation: Review the project’s README file and any contributing guidelines to understand the project’s purpose, setup instructions, and contribution process.
Steps to Contribute to Open Source
1. Fork the Repository
Forking will create a copy of the repository in your account, now you can make changes in the project. To fork a project open the GitHub repository and on the right-hand side click on the fork button –
2. Setup the Project
After forking the repository you need to setup the project and test the application on your local device or emulator. Firstly check if there is a read-me guide given in the repository. Some projects have additional setups and plugins which need to be added manually. Once done we can move to the next step.
How to find an issue?
Usually, most of the big and popular project repositories do have some issues or bugs or any required feature for the application. For that go to the issues section of the remote repository on GitHub. Many repositories have issues recommended by other developers. If you do not find an issue there then you can test the project yourself and find any bug or a feature that you think will add value to the application. After knowing what contribution you can make. It’s time to implement it.
- Commit and Push – Commit changes with proper messages and push them to the repository on Github.
- Make a Pull Request – To make a pull request you need to push changes to the sub-branch from where the owner of the project can merge it to the main branch.
Get your PR merged quickly
- Find bugs or errors which are very urgent or find features that will increase the value of the project by a significant amount.
- Communicate with the owner of the repository to look into your PR also ask for suggestions and discuss other queries.
- Suggest valid test results (Junit or Expresso) to show that your PR would not break the app.
- Have a well-maintained Github account with valid information.
