Seeking Advice on How to Start Contributing

Open Source Development
1

Hi everyone,

I’m Vittorio Sironi, a computer engineering student at Politecnico di Milano. I came across the MIT App Inventor project and I’m really interested in contributing.

I’ve already gone through the GitHub repository. However, I would greatly appreciate any advice or suggestions on how to effectively start contributing. Specifically, I’d love to know:

  • Are there any beginner-friendly issues or tasks that I could start working on?
  • What’s the best way to get familiar with the codebase and development practices used in this project?

I’m open to any guidance or resources you can provide to help me get started. Thanks in advance for your time and support!

2

Benvenuto Vittorio,

App Inventor is a fairly complex code base, so I usually start folks by introducing parts based on what their interests are. Generally though, the code base is broken down into a number of modules:

  • components: The Android implementation of components
  • components-ios: The iOS implementation of components
  • blocklyeditor: Support for the blocks language and the editor
  • appengine: Front end (except the blocks editor) and backend for the web service
  • buildserver: Server code for compiling projects into final products

As far as good first tasks, that will likely depend on your existing skill set. We have a help wanted tag on GitHub but it's been a while since I curated the issues. I can probably get to that later this week.

@SimoneSantin is also based in Milan and worked with us for Google Summer of Code the past summer. Maybe you two can connect as well.

Cheers,
Evan

1 Like
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Hi Vittorio,
As Ewan has already told you, I’m also from Milan and I worked as a contributor through GSoC. I think you’ve been informed about the essentials already, but do take a good look at the documentation because it really helps in understanding the codebase, which can be quite overwhelming at the start. Try to focus on the module you want to work on so you can study that part in depth. If you need any further advice beyond what you’ve already received, feel free to contact me privately, so we can also discuss it in Italian.
Best wishes!

4

Thank you very much to both for the advices.
I think that I'm going to take a look in depth of the docuemtation and I'm going to explore some of the different modules in order to choose in which contributing.
For sure I will need further advice

Thank you again!