Awesome tools for Open Source Contribution
A list of awesome tools that can help you in searching codebase, issues, quick edits, and generating Readme files.
Originally published at surajondev.com
Introduction
We are in October which is well known as the month of Hacktoberfest in the open-source community. During this month, beginner developers learn to contribute to open-source projects.
I am participating in this event for the last three years. Last year, I also participated as a maintainer. This year, I am also participating as a maintainer and trying my best to help the developers.
So, I am here to help you by providing some tools you can use while contributing to an open-source project. This tool will be helpful in:
- Searching Code from large codebases
- Finding Issues to resolve
- Online Editor for Quick edit
So, let's get started.
Documatic
A search engine for your codebase; Ask Documatic a question and find relevant code and insights in seconds
Documatic is a platform where you can find relevant code from a codebase by just asking a question. The question can be "How to connect to the database?" and it will give you code regarding the database. The code need not have any word related to the database but it will return you the all code related to this. The most relevant code snippets will be at the top.
The repository to which you want to contribute, fork it in your GitHub profile. After forking, connect your GitHub profile with Documatic and start searching the codebase. This will save you time as you don't have to manually search or wait for the maintainer's comment.
You can check the platform at: app.documatic.com
You can try the working of the platform here: askyourcode.com
CodeTriage
Discover the easiest way to get started contributing to open source. Over 66,078 devs are helping 7,320 projects with our free, community-developed tools
CodeTriage is an awesome platform to find open-source repositories to contribute. You can filter the repository by more than 100 programming languages. The repositories are red, yellow, and green showing the complexity of the project as Advanced, Intermediate, and Beginner-friendly respectively.
Good First Issue
Making your first open-source contribution is easier than you think. Good First Issue is a curated list of issues from popular open-source projects that you can fix easily. Start today!
Good First Issue provides you with the issue that is more likely to be solved by beginner developers. You can explore more than 20 programming languages. You can find the description, language, stars, and last activity of every repository.
GitPod
Spin up fresh, automated dev environments for each task, in the cloud, in seconds.
GitPod provides you with an online environment in a workspace to code. The code editor is the online version of VS Code. I used it as a chrome extension. Whenever I need to do a quick edit or to verify the code before merging I use GitPod.
You can download it as the chrome extension from here
readme.so
The easiest way to create a README
Readme.so is one of the best platforms to generate readme for your project. The drag-and-drop features enable you to choose templates for Title, and Contribution guidelines, run locally, and other important aspects of a Readme file. You can easily download the created file in a markdown(.md) with the name README.md.
Connect with Me
Conclusion
I hope, this set of tools will help you in the open-source journey. Take full advantage of this month by participating in Hacktoberfest and other hackathons.
Thanks for reading the blog post.