All learning paths Learn See Try Make Make one contribution to a project What this lesson is about Pick an issue you can reproduce, send the smallest change with a test, and answer the review round.
A project you use has an open task to translate one documentation page into Bhojpuri. Your Sunday is free. What first?
A Fork it, translate the page tonight, and write on the issue once the PR is open. B Read CONTRIBUTING, reproduce the issue, and claim it before you touch a file. C Read CONTRIBUTING, then start on the page straight away, since a page cannot be run.
Check my recall Why this matters GitHub's own guide for contributing from a fork is six steps, and five of them happen before you write anything. A project's CONTRIBUTING file says which issues are open to newcomers and what a pull request must carry. One large open project puts it plainly: if your fix can be one line, make it one line.
You can take one open issue from reading CONTRIBUTING to a change the project merged.
GitHub's own guide for contributing from a fork is six steps, and five of them happen before you write anything. A project's CONTRIBUTING file says which issues are open to newcomers and what a pull request must carry. One large open project puts it plainly: if your fix can be one line, make it one line.
Read CONTRIBUTING, reproduce the issue, and claim it before you touch a file. Send the smallest change that fixes it, with one test that fails without it. The PR says what changed and why; a review comment is work, not a refusal. Task A project's issue list carries a community task: translate one documentation page into your own language.
Weak approach Translates four pages in one night and opens a single PR with all of them. No issue was claimed. The project's own file asks for one page per PR, and nobody reviews it for three weeks.
Stronger approach Reads CONTRIBUTING, comments on the issue to claim one page, and works in a branch of a fork. The commit message names the page and the issue number. The PR says which page, why the old wording misled a reader, and how the build was checked. A reviewer asks for two word changes, and it is merged the next day.
Why the stronger approach works Both did about the same amount of writing. Only one followed the project's own file, so only one has a merged change to show for the night.
Try a changed situation Your uncle asks you to fix the wrong phone number on his shop's printed price list before the reprint. What do you change?
Make something yourself Make one real contribution to an open project. Give the issue, the file you changed, and the check you ran. Add your PR description and what the review round asked for.
Lesson 9 of 10 on Coding for evaluation work next Write a review the author can act on Part 3 ends in a work sample you can send
Read the primary or official source: GitHub Docs · Creating a pull request from a fork