Contributing to Helm
Before we start off,
Just a few questions
Guess the number of PRs I have raise for helm repository?
Totally 17 PRs
9 Merged
8 Closed
Guess the number of issues I have been involved in helm repository?
Totally 91 Issues.
57 Closed. I helped close few of them.
34 Open. I’m trying to help there.
Some of the ways I contributed in...
Reproduce Issues
and Confirm them
Try to find the root cause of the issue - is it an issue with helm?
When helm is the issue - Find code that’s causing the issue. Try to discuss the solutions.
Raise PRs with tests and code. Discuss the code and get it merged
Help someone else to contribute, by analysing issue, reviewing PR code / trying out PR code
Some of my Learnings
No tool is perfect.
Helm has so many bugs.
People create issues / comment on existing ones almost every single day!
Trying to close every other issue is so tough by yourself!
It’s like working on production support and getting tickets every hour!
Doing it all alone might sound cool, but it requires so much time and effort. Get help from community members who are willing to raise PRs!
Helm v3 has lots of bugs. Lots of them go unnoticed because of lack of some tests.
Starting from bugs in simplest of features, to crazy issues like helm linting feature working in Linux and MacOS, but not working in Windows. Some back slash issue
Some things that I have tried to do while contributing is - try to comment on PRs if they don’t have failing tests for the issue
Now, some takeaways for you:
You can contribute to Open Source too!
Anyone can!
If you are interested, you can start small and start contributing. Don’t give yourself excuses to not contribute
Choosing projects - you can choose any project you like.
It can be big or small.
Just do it! Don’t think!
Open Source Needs You.
Why contribute in the first place?
Before answering that, let’s take a look at this
How many of these languages do you think are open source?
What about these softwares ? How many are open source?
Many Open Source repositories are out there! We use so many of them. For free and with freedom! We can contribute a bit back
Bottom line:
Open Source can survive only if it gets contributions in some way or the other. Or it will not sustain and people will not trust them anymore.
Thank You!