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Creating an Issue can be a great way to help an Open Source Project.
Resources:
- GitHub Guide: Finding ways to contribute to open source on GitHub
- Many projects use issues in a very different way. As an example, check out this guide from the Android software project called “Life of a Bug”
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Before you can fix a problem,
you have to know about it.
0:00
Creating an issue is a great way
to help an open source project.
0:03
Have you ever started using
an open source package,
0:07
get into your project, but
then it just doesn't work?
0:09
You dig in and figure out that there is
a bug in one of the methods you need.
0:13
You may not have any idea
how to fix the bug, but
0:17
you can help the maintainers and
other contributors
0:19
by building a really great bug report
in the form of a GitHub issue.
0:22
Let me show you how to create a great bug
report on my Hello-Treehouse repository.
0:27
First, head over to
GitHub.com/RealKDagle/Hello-Treehouse.
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On the top bar, click the issues link.
0:40
Here you'll see a list of any
open issues for the project.
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Here's your first tip.
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Check any existing issues for
what you're about to report.
0:48
You can use the search box to look for
keywords about your issue, or
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scan the existing list.
0:55
By looking for an issue first, you can
help the maintainers keep the project
0:57
actionable by not creating a bunch of
extra clean up work with duplicate issues.
1:01
All right, lets pretend that we've
looked for a duplicate issue and
1:05
haven't found one.
1:09
So we're gonna have to
create a brand new issue.
1:10
This is where the majority
of our hard work will be.
1:13
We need to be sure to create a really
helpful issue for the project.
1:15
For this video, I'm going to try and
run the project locally.
1:20
First I'll go back to the main
repository page and click on the README.
1:24
Let's see what they want us to do.
1:29
Okay, I need to run ruby start.rb
from within the project's folder.
1:32
Great, now let's go back to the main
repository page and copy the clone link.
1:36
Now, we'll run git clone and
paste the repository link.
1:46
I'll move into the repository that we
just cloned, and then clear my terminal.
1:53
Great.
1:59
The README said I had to run
ruby start.rb to run the file.
2:00
And of course I get an error.
2:06
If you aren't sure how to
fix the problem yourself,
2:08
you can always create an issue for
the project.
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Lets go back to GitHub.
2:13
To create a new issue,
let's click the Issues tab, and
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then on the far right
we'll click New Issue.
2:19
The first thing we need to do is be clear.
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That starts with a good issue title.
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Let's use running start.rb
results in an error.
2:27
That's pretty clear.
2:34
Now in the body, we should describe
reproducible steps so the maintainers and
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contributors can see what we're seeing.
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First I'm going to
describe what I'm seeing.
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Running start.rb after cloning
the project results in a Ruby error.
2:45
There.
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Now, I'm going to include
my system details,
2:55
since the bug may be
related to my computer.
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I'm using a Mac, so
I'll want to give my operating
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system version, okay, OS X Yosemite.
3:05
And I'll add that to the issue.
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And we'll want to give
our Ruby version too.
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I'll run ruby -v, and
copy the ruby version.
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There.
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Now, let's also include the output
from the script that we ran.
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Let's go back to our terminal, and
copy the command and error that we got.
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I'm going to use mark down formatting to
make the error output easier to read.
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By using three back ticks, GitHub will
display the error information without
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wrapping it or doing any odd formatting.
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We can see what this will look like
by clicking the Preview tab here.
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Great, now all we need to do is click
Submit New Issue, and there's our issue.
3:58
Now, all we have to do
is submit the issue.
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Other people who have the same issue as
us can add information to our issue, and
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any possible fixes can
reference this exact issue.
4:13
In the next video, we'll contribute to
the Hello-Treehouse project by opening
4:16
a pull request to fix this bug.
4:20
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