title: “Mentoring: First Patch” tags: [“mentoring”,“newcomers”,“patch”]

Mentoring: First Patch

A beginner‘s first patch on a project can be an intimidating and frustrating experience. Clearly documenting the entire process from checkout to accepted patch greatly lowers the barrier for a new contributor, and makes it more likely that they’ll come back for their second patch.

Here's some tips on how to do that.

Outline:

  • Talk to the project first
    • Make sure it's wanted/welcome
    • See if there's already work in progress, or suggestions
    • Find someone to be your advocate
  • Finding the source
  • Writing a good commit message
  • Following up on your pull request
  • Learning from your struggle: Improving the documentation