Hi Olga, On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 8:44 AM, Оля Тележная <olyatelezhnaya@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hello Jeff, > I want to try myself into new role of a Git contributor. Welcome to Git! > All of the projects sound super interesting for me and I am ready to take > part in all of them, but the project "Unifying Git's format languages" will > be super useful for me myself, so my dream is to try solve that task first. Great that you found a project you like! > I need help to choose my first task in the project, because first steps are > usually the most frightening. > I am familiar enough with C and there's no problem to read any docs, but > please help me choosing the first task. If you have any guidance like "how > to start" or "how to choose tasks", please send that links also. You can try to work first on the project you are interested in or you can find and work on a small project first. One way to find a small project is to see what people are talking about on the mailing list[1]. Quite often there are bugs that can be fixed, and more experienced people may help sketch out a solution. You can also find small items good for newcomers marked with the "leftoverbits" tag, which you can search for in the mailing list[2]. We don't have a written guide specifically downloading git, getting it built, running the tests, and so forth, but you might start with: git clone https://github.com/git/git and reading the INSTALL file. As the mailing list can be a bit intimidating at first, we don't mind working with you one-on-one a bit during the application period. About the mailing list, please add [Outreachy] in the subject to make it clear that you are applying for the Outreachy program. While at it on the Git mailing list we are used to replying to parts of message after those parts. We don't usually reply before the message. In other words we are used to "inline replying", not "top posting" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style). Please try to use the same posting style as us, it will help keep discussions more standard and easier to understand. Also we feel free to remove parts of the messages we are quoting that are not relevant anymore. For getting in touch with us, direct email is our preferred method. We could also meet on IRC if you like, but it looks like our timezones might not overlap much. Still, we can probably set up a time. Let us know if you have any questions at all. This is our first time mentoring for Outreachy, so we've surely forgotten to mention some obvious thing you would want to know. :) Thanks, Christian. [1] There are details of the list at https://git-scm.com/community, but you may want to just browse the archive at: https://public-inbox.org/git [2] https://public-inbox.org/git/?q=leftoverbits