Hey James, Thank you for sharing these "first-steps" to contribute to this project. Although I wasn’t directly tagged in this email, I greatly appreciate the steps you’ve outlined for understanding the codebase and contributing meaningfully. Your advice is incredibly helpful for someone like me who is eager to contribute effectively.
-Vijay On Mon, Nov 25, 2024 at 4:20 AM James Dailey <jdai...@apache.org> wrote: > > Akash and Sarthak - thanks for your interest and welcome. > > Because Fineract is a large code base used in production at regulated > financial institutions, it is essential that new contributors start with > understanding the code base rather than trying to add new features. > There is a tendency for devs to want to do the "next cool thing" when really > what is needed is more documentation, more test coverage, more detailed > tickets, more reviews of changes. > > As a first step, you can review the existing PRs that are coming in. Do they > make sense to you? Can you follow the logic? Are the details in the Jira > ticket sufficient? You might want to try that for a week or two or five. > Following project activity is a very important first step. You might even > have some clarifying questions that could help the project become better. > That is also a contribution. > > Secondly, look for areas that are not well covered. On many open source > projects, too many devs are writing too much code with too little > documentation. That is true here as well. Once you understand the features > and functions and the structure of the code, can you help with some small > piece of documentation? ... we need people digging into specific areas that > are in the code and documenting what is there. That might also involve more > test coverage in Cucumber (Gherkin files). > > Third, you might look at the really old jira tickets, and validate one by > one that the tickets are still needing to be fixed. We have hundreds of old > tickets that have creation dates before 2022 and I strongly suspect 90% are > no longer valid. This is tedious work, but is needed. Pick a ticket, read > it, determine if it seems real, put a comment that "yes, verified as of > github checkpoint xxxx-xxxx" that the issue still exists" or "no, verified as > of ... that the bug ticket is no longer valid". > > Generally, contributors should come with very modest aims at first. This is > a very complex project. > > James > > On Sun, Nov 24, 2024 at 3:30 AM Sarthak Deokar <deokarsartha...@gmail.com> > wrote: >> >> Hi, >> >> I am also suffering the same issues hope we could connect and work together >> >> Regards, >> Sarthak Deokar >> >> On Sun, Nov 24, 2024, 13:08 Akash Nadar <akashnada...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>> Hi everyone, >>> >>> I’m Akash, a new contributor to Apache Fineract. I have experience with >>> Java, Spring Boot, and building REST APIs. I’ve successfully set up the >>> project locally, including database connections, and have explored the >>> Swagger documentation. >>> >>> I couldn’t find any "good first issues" or beginner-friendly tasks on the >>> GitHub Issues page. Could someone please suggest a task or guide me on how >>> I can get started with my first contribution? I’m particularly interested >>> in working on APIs or improving existing features. >>> >>> Looking forward to your guidance! >>> >>> Thanks and regards, >>> Akash
