Contributing to open source can be beneficial on several ways to a developer. For this, finding a correct project to work on plays a vital role. Lets see how you can find and contribute to Open Source projects in Github.

Finding the right project for you

When you are getting started with Open Source contribution, try to find projects based on your current programming language of your choice. This way you can have a better understanding about the project codebase quicker. However, this is no specific requirement as you can start contributing by fixing even grammatical mistakes in documentations too. Here are some tips on how to find popular Open Source projects in github:

• Github's Trending section is one of the best place to search for currently popular Open Source projects. This section includes projects for various languages but they are all cool worth checking out.
• Based on your stack and likings, github also recommends projects for you. This is marked as Explore repositories section on homepage itself.
• If you want to have a quick search around Github, you can apply quick search for projects with selected filters for great match with your interest like below:
• For beginners, it is recommended to work on issues with label good-first-issue. This label indicates their complexity and are easier to deal with.

Preparing to Contribute

Once you have got a project to work on, search for the issues (preferably with label good-first-issue) and select one that you want to work on and solve. The most crucial file for an Open Source project is its README.md file. It contains all the information about project; setup, debugging, tools, deploying, contribution guide, code of conduct, license. You must read and understand it thorougly before you get started with the issue. The Contribution Guidelines section will suggest how the contribution process looks like for the project, so make sure you follow!

Generally, the process looks like this:

• You select an issue to work on and comment on the issue to get it assigned for you.
• One of the project maintainer assigns the issue to you.
• In the mean-time, you can setup the project locally following the setup instructions. (You can also get help from other developers through their forum or communication channels, if in case you need any.)
• Once the issue is assigned to you or you are acknowledged to work, you can start coding.

Making a Pull Request

• The general rule of thumb is to fork the project repo and begin working on it.

• Create a branch with meaningful name or as specified in the contribution guidelines. Typical branch names are with feature names as feat/feature_name.
• Make sure you solve the issue and commit with a meaningful commit on the branch and push to origin.
• Go to your repository and select your branch, then you can open a pull request by clicking Contribute button.

• Fill in the title and description for your PR and bravo you are done.
• You can now wait for someone to review and merge your PR.

Thus, this is how you can make a contribution in Open Source projects in Github. Happy Coding!