Ruby Open Source Projects For Beginners

Rich Steinmetz -

I see why maintainers and their associates are advocating and sourcing for open source contributors ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) I also see the benefit for developers, and especially for aspiring developers to take the leap and to contribute. This is the greatest opportunity to gather real-world experience while you are still on your journey of getting into the industry.

Lately, I witnessed interesting keynotes and talks about open source projects in the last Ruby and Rails Conferences. For example:

As a beginner, you have special needs to ease yourself into making your first PR and continue having fun with making even more PRs. Here's what to look out for:

  • Active repository with active maintainers
  • Repo with a project that you will be able to setup (i.e. familiar stack and a good CONTRIBUTING.md
  • (Big bonus) strong community; preferably with regular online/in-person meetings and a central place to chat (like Discord, Gitter, or Slack)
  • "Good First Issue" type of labels and/or well-described Issues

Ruby and Rails open-source projects for beginners

I wanted to share a hand-picked selection of repositories where I'm sure that it's good to get out your first and next issue:

GitHub - exercism/website: The codebase for Exercism’s website.
The codebase for Exercism’s website. . Contribute to exercism/website development by creating an account on GitHub.
GitHubexercism
Great Slack community, many repositories to contribute to with all types of issues.

GitHub - rubyforgood/casa: Volunteer management system for nonprofit CASA, which serves foster youth in counties across America.
Volunteer management system for nonprofit CASA, which serves foster youth in counties across America. - GitHub - rubyforgood/casa: Volunteer management system for nonprofit CASA, which serves foste...
GitHubrubyforgood
Some good first issues and a great community of good people.

GitHub - ChaelCodes/ConfBuddies: An app to help you find and meet up with your buddies at conferences.
An app to help you find and meet up with your buddies at conferences. - GitHub - ChaelCodes/ConfBuddies: An app to help you find and meet up with your buddies at conferences.
GitHubChaelCodes
Fun project, easy to get started with Chael as your kind maintainer.

GitHub - RichStone/ruby-freedom-API-stack-sinatra-mongodb-heroku: A lightweight Ruby API and mini backend application.
A lightweight Ruby API and mini backend application. - GitHub - RichStone/ruby-freedom-API-stack-sinatra-mongodb-heroku: A lightweight Ruby API and mini backend application.
GitHubRichStone
Just a shameful plug if you wanna fiddle with me on a Sinatra API stack template ;)

Issues · thoughtbot/factory_bot
A library for setting up Ruby objects as test data. - Issues · thoughtbot/factory_bot
GitHubthoughtbot
Some Good First Issues in here

Pull requests · stripe-ruby-mock/stripe-ruby-mock
A mocking library for testing stripe ruby. Contribute to stripe-ruby-mock/stripe-ruby-mock development by creating an account on GitHub.
GitHubstripe-ruby-mock
The next step, if you've worked with Stripe before and are interested in diving deeper

Actually, there are like a million repositories out there where you can make your big decision of where to start contributing. If you are still not overwhelmed, these are some places to casually browse for your favorite repo:

GitHub - asyraffff/Open-Source-Ruby-and-Rails-Apps: Awesome Ruby and Rails Open Source applications 🌈
Awesome Ruby and Rails Open Source applications 🌈. Contribute to asyraffff/Open-Source-Ruby-and-Rails-Apps development by creating an account on GitHub.
GitHubasyraffff
Ruby and Rails repos, web apps, and tools

GitHub - MunGell/awesome-for-beginners: A list of awesome beginners-friendly projects.
A list of awesome beginners-friendly projects. Contribute to MunGell/awesome-for-beginners development by creating an account on GitHub.
GitHubMunGell
Different beginner labels in different repos

GitHub - public-apis/public-apis: A collective list of free APIs
A collective list of free APIs. Contribute to public-apis/public-apis development by creating an account on GitHub.
GitHubpublic-apis
APIs, you may find some ruby-based ones here

Get Started Contributing to Open Source Projects | CodeTriage
Discover the easiest way to get started contributing to open source. Over 63,245 devs are helping 6,719 projects with our free, community developed tools
CodeTriage
THE open source project finder tool.

How to contribute to open-source

Now you have the Why and the Where, here is a little bonus of get yourself kickstarted.

Let's see if we can package it into a simple process:

  1. Pick a repo (optionally, find someone to work with you together on the repo)
  2. Look for beginner-labeled or well-described issues
  3. Set up the project according to the CONTRIBUTING.md or instructions in the README.md
  4. Reproduce the issue (even if you will "just" be writing docs, you often want to reproduce the thing)
  5. Solve the issue
  6. Make your PR
  7. Wait for feedback and react to the review

Enjoy and share your experience with the ruby communities!