How I Contribute To Atom From Scratch

19 Feb 2017 open-source atom review

This article is more like a note about how I contribute to popular open source software – Atom – from little
I would try to make it easy to understand
I want to encourage those passionate with open source but don’t know how to start.

Time is always the most valuable for developer so I like to discovering productivity tools to save time
- what do i need in ATOM
  - code: auto-complete, snippet, linting…
  - document: markdown utils/highlighting, text folding like what workflowy offers
I like to discover packages in Atom pages
- try to describe my needs and convert them into key words
Atom encourage user to discover it’s power and customize it
flight-manual is a good starting point
- discover more functionalities to make your life easier
- tutorial about building hello-world package from boilerplate
  - i took some time to go through it (fm version 1.0)

most fun part: try to play around the rich APIs
- e.g. insert template with date in markdown, move cursor to some place you want
Atom provide a playful interface — init.coffee so we can play with API with ease
- you can implement custom command on the fly
I let my init.coffee start to grow large
- plugin of text manipulation in markdown
a good starting point to satisfy what I need to enhance productivity

now I can try to enhance my ux/productivity
- by discovering Atom built-in (config, hotkey, snippet, stylesheet)
- by discovering 3rd package
- by customizing my own command in init.coffee with help of API doc
but sometimes we are still unsatisfied
- I want to open file without toggling tree view
  - discover it on issue, join discussion
  - looking into source, found that core function is prepared
try to reuse functions from source
- POC in init.coffee
  - feedback on issue page

I’ve found that I can start to contribute!
- just require some refactoring and reuse some inner help function
- discuss on issue page
prepare dev env/tools
- fork repo, sync it with upstream
- link,
- CoffeeScript linter
wrap some code and then commits
- learn and refactor Coffee Script
  - takes time to understand it
- So happy it works after some iteration!
- refactoring commits message
  - commits often, with little changes
  - commits message style guide
  - use interactive rebase to get commits tidy
create PR for reviewing
- fixing typo/syntax by comments/reviews
create spec is hard but I feel like I’m close to it
- learning from reading other’s code
- learning jasmine, BDD
- learning Travis CI
interact with reviewer
- don’t be afraid to discuss/notify with reviewer
  - they are busy so try to keep in contact with them
- so happy to see it merged then go in beta/stable

starts from one open source you like to use
- better if you use it every day
- better if it has friendly document
  - since I can easily play with it so I can keep follow on it
- better if it has supportive community
watch and learn from open source
- how to write spec
- how to contribute to Issue
- how to send PR
yes you can contribute, Atom prepares simple issue tag for anyone in interest
- tips on issue query
  - help-wanted
  - sort by most comments
  - q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3Ahelp-wanted+sort%3Acomments-desc
- core packages require many helps (issue and PR)

Te-Chi's Dev Note